


The Time and the Tide

by orphan_account



Series: Six Degrees (More or Less) [4]
Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-22
Updated: 2015-10-11
Packaged: 2018-01-26 01:38:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 37,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1669943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Time and tide waits for no man, but that’s not exactly an exhaustive list.<br/>Years before Lukas knew that he had a brother or even a family besides his emotionally battering father, he lived in Larvik, Norway. A rather small fishing town where friendships were born that would stretch and bend with time and across more than a few national borders, but mostly he remembers as where fate would have it that he would never be alone again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It is the last year of primary school, they are all (give or take) thirteen years old, and Lukas just passed his bicycle safety course, which means he can now use his bicycle to go to and from school. He appreciates the independence, and he also likes this arrangement because it means he can go to the shore or the rocks or look at the ocean instead of going home. Lately there have been a lot of strangers in his father’s house and Lukas doesn’t like how they try to talk to him and try to get him to play card games or take a sip of some drink. 

But today all of the year six classes are walking to the park, where their teacher Marianne has planned a game of capture the flag for the rest of the day. They have to walk with a buddy on the sidewalk, and usually his is Berwald since he’s quiet and doesn’t bother him like Mathias does. The team captains are always the people who are ranked 1 and 2 in gymnastics class, with 2 getting to start picking first, and today, Lukas is 1. He was the only one to be able to be able to do a back-hand-spring on the first try and he can stay in a handstand in the second longest, after Mathias, which is just because he’s older and a bit stronger than him. 

“I want everyone to have good sportsmanship,” Marianne tells the 24-student group in her teacher voice at the front of the line. “You guys know the rules, but the year five teacher said one of her kids tripped another. Do you guys think you have better sportsmanship than them?” 

Lukas decides that it’s a bit counterintuitive to make sportsmanship a competition among the classes, but it seems to do the trick, and within a minute most everyone are all telling each other the rules over and over again in rather patronizing voices. 

They arrive at the park, with the zeitgeist being nervous and excited all at the same time, and Marianne claps for their attention. “Mathias, you can pick first,” she tells him, and he does. They go back and forth until everyone is taken. The last one selected is a boy who cries when he gets dirt on him; even the new kid who doesn’t speak Norwegian is selected ahead of him. 

“Divide up,” she instructs, giving Lukas the blue flag and Mathias the red one. “Fair game, everyone!” she reminds them, and blows the whistle. They have five minutes to hide the flag, but it has to be visible from at least one angle, not buried underground, and not put in a tree that is too dangerous to climb. 

Lukas gives the flag to a girl named Liv, who is the fastest runner and probably the best at strategy, and tells her she can hide it wherever she wants. Lukas is itching to take his shoes off since they’re on sand, but Marianne will yell at him (“You’ll cut your feet on glass!”) if he does. 

Mathias and Lukas return to the centre line, marked with various sticks and a line in the sand, to shake hands, as is customary, and the game begins. 

Almost immediately, Lukas sees a gap in the defence, and he runs. He’s the third fastest runner in their class, after Liv and Mathias, and the two people who go after him yelling are two of the slowest. He easily surpasses them and makes it to the back of their territory, cutting through the beach and scampering up a sand dune to the forested area, where the flag is usually hidden. He can’t hear anyone coming after him, so he starts looking in the trees for the bright red piece of fabric. 

“Ah,” he notes, and starts climbing a tree where he believes he sees a corner of it, when suddenly he is aware that he is not alone. 

“Hello Lukas,” Mathias says from the bottom of the tree with a giant grin plastered on his face. 

_Darn it._ It’s going to be difficult to get out of this tree and run back to safe territory with Mathias at his heels. So Lukas climbs higher, and sees the red of the flag near the top. He reaches up (his arm nearly isn’t long enough) and grasps the corner of it. 

“You didn’t hide it very well,” Lukas can’t help but taunt, waving the red fabric from the top of the tree like a wife bidding his war-bound husband farewell. 

“You don’t have an escape route,” Mathias counters. 

He is right. Lukas doesn’t. He looks on either side of him, and finally he sees his saving grace. A long extending branch of the tree, that looks stable enough to walk on, leads on top of a small cliff. If he runs along it quickly enough, he might be able to get on top of the cliff before Mathias can climb the 3 or 4 metres of rock. He makes his move; Mathias sees what he’s planning to do but it might not matter if he can be fast enough. 

Just when he is only a half metre away from the safety of the cliff, he feels a grab at his leg, and off-balance on the branch, he falls with the flag in his hands. Mathias catches him (arrogant idiot), but Lukas squirms away wildly enough that Mathias can’t pull the flag looped through one of the belt loops of his shorts, which would send him to “jail”. 

They struggle for a moment, and Mathias pushes him away from the rocks, and moment too late sees the giant puddle of mud that Lukas is about to fall into. Not about to be the only one suffering for the rest of the day, Lukas grabs the front of Mathias’ shirt and down they go. Lukas comes up sputtering from the black hole of god knows what a moment later, drenched in black slime that’s currently sticking to his clothes and hair like a second layer of skin. 

“Gross,” he says. 

Finally, Mathias pulls his flag, holding it triumphantly in his hand, apparently not caring about the sudden appearance change. “You’re going to jail, I caught you,” he says happily. 

“Well you’re explaining to Marianne what happened, then,” Lukas answers, and together they walk back to the centre line. 

_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+ 

"Oh my god!” Marianne screeches as she looks her two students, completely coated with black goo, up and down. “What on earth happened? Are either of you hurt?” She doesn’t see any blood, but with boys of this age, it never hurt to ask. 

“No,” Mathias answers. “It was an accident. We both fell.” 

Thankfully, Marianne doesn’t make them call off the game early, but she does give them a plethora of paper towels and tell them to go to the water and wash up to the best of their abilities. 

“Wow, look, I found a bug in mine!” Mathias exclaims. “I think this beetle has an extra leg!’ he adds happily, holding up the grime-covered insect between his thumb and index finger with childish fascination written all over his face. 

“Idiot,” Lukas murmurs under his breath, and starts scrubbing his shirt. 

_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+ 

Somehow, in a mysterious set of circumstances, the new student from Finland named Tino wins the game for Mathias’ team. Berwald tries to chase him after he somehow slips past their defences, but for what he lacks is height he makes up for in sheer speed. 

"I found flag,” he tells his team when he makes it back to safety, and instead of the usual cheering, everyone looks at him stunned. No one expected this small, rather shrimpy new student, who barely speaks Norwegian and speaks with a funny accent unlike others they’ve heard, to outrun or out-strategy anyone. 

“Why are you wet?” someone asks. 

“I swim across lake,” he replies. 

There’s shouting of protest, because no one’s ever set foot in the lake that is split in half by the line between the two sides, but Berwald in his typical gruff voice says, “It isn’t against the rules.” It isn’t, and Marianne declares Mathias’ Team the winner, much to the displeasure of many of the kids on the loosing one. Lukas doesn’t particularly care about the results, but he is impressed with Tino, and he’s much more concerned about the fact that his skin (right down to his eyelids) and clothes seem to be stained a permanent black colour. 

“Lukas, Mathias, you’ll both need to go down to the head’s office to call your parents and let them know you’ll need a change of clothes. You can shower in the locker room, I’ll write you a pass for your next class. Aesthetics, is it?” 

“Yep,” Mathias replies happily. 

“Why are you so cheerful?” Lukas asks after Marianne leaves with the rest of their class, as they wait outside of the head of school’s office for him to finish his phone call. 

“My team won capture the flag and I get to skip aesthetics. I’d call that a great day!” he exclaims with a stupid grin on his face, leaning back onto the seat. 

“Oh dear,” Hr. Jakhelln says quietly, pinching the bridge of his nose in frustration. “Get off those seats, right now!” he bellows at them finally upon realising their dirty clothes. 

They jump to their feet in surprise, and he leads them into his office with exasperation written on his face. “Phone’s right there,” he says, pointing at a small mahogany end table beside an expensive-looking chair. 

“Don’t sit on anything,” he warns them without looking up from his personal computer. Lukas feels dread swelling in his stomach at the thought of having to speak with his father unnecessarily, especially asking him to bring him something from home. So instead he dials a random number, and is pleased to find that a pre-recorded message answers him. “He’s not answering, and he works at a welding plant,” he lies. His father was fired months ago. 

“I’ll ask my mom if she can bring a change of clothes for Lukas too,” Mathias offers, sliding the phone towards himself. “Hej Mor, jeg faldt ned i en mudderpøl da vi legede capture the flag, kan du være sød og hente mig noget skiftetøj?" Their conversation, most of which Lukas can’t understand, goes on for only a minute before he says, “Tak, bye!” 

“She said of course. Can we go take showers?” Mathias asks Hr. Jakhelln. 

“Go,” he replies. 

“Your dad got fired,” Mathias says, too loudly, as they walk out of the office. 

“Shut up, Mathias!” he exclaims with a little too much force. Embarrassed at his emotional outburst, he walks ahead, but Mathias jogs a few steps and catches up with him while they turn into the boys’ locker room. 

“Sorry,” he replies sincerely. “That was stupid of me.” 

“You’re always stupid, Mathias.” 

“That’s not true, I get better marks on my report cards than you do!” 

Lukas huffs. “Only in English! I got a better mark in music!” 

“My Danish is better than yours,” he replies, a smile teasing at his the corners of his lips. He rolls his eyes. “That’s certainly impressive, Mathias, since I can’t speak any Danish. You certainly have got me beat there. Let’s hear you play violin,” he replies. 

“I can play the harmonica,” Mathias replies. 

“That’s not a real instrument,” Lukas snaps as he yanks his shirt off and grabs a towel from the bin. 

“It is so!” 

“No it’s not.” 

_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+ 

Mrs. Køhler brings them both changes of clothes in labelled plastic bags. 

“Tak, Mor!” Mathias exclaims. 

“Thank you, Anna,” Lukas says graciously, happy to finally be out of his gross, most likely ruined clothes. 

“Both of you stay out of trouble!” she says affectionately, and Lukas doesn’t like the association. It’s usually _Mathias_ getting into trouble, and him getting dragged along. He’ll need to be more careful around him if he wants to avoid any further trips to the head’s office. 

“It was just as much your fault as mine,” Mathias says, as if reading his thoughts. 

“That’s a riot,” he replies without any real heat, and leaves to head to his next class. He’s certainly missed all of aesthetics, which isn’t really a tragedy, but if he hurries he can make it to the second half of maths.


	2. Chapter 2

Lukas, Berwald, and Mathias spend their summer break as they always have, on the rocks about a kilometre out from shore, with packed lunches and sometimes board games. This summer though, Berwald invited his new friend Tino, who can sort of speak Norwegian now and seems like a nice guy. They have mastered the art of precariously swimming with backpacks without drenching their contents.

“Stop splashing me, Mathias,” Lukas says, even though he doesn’t mind. Their feet dangle in the water as they sit on the rocks like a group of penguins or seafaring birds.

“Look, sailboat!” Tino exclaims, pointing at a boat with an exquisite painted sail, like a watercolour with all the haziness and vibrancy of an evening sky. The pinks and oranges mingle happily with the dark blues and lavenders.

Mathias slides off the rock and sighs into the water. “I can’t believe we’re going to Ungdomskolde next year,” he says wistfully. “It’s going to be so much work.”

“I don’t know about that,” Lukas replies lazily, pulling his feet up from the ocean and laying back on the hot rock.

“What do you think you will take as elective?” Tino asks.

“Advanced Norwegian,” Mathias and Lukas answer simultaneously, and then look at each other curiously.

“My dad wants to make sure that I get rid of my accent,” Mathias explains quickly. He's still got one, although it's fading. Lukas wishes he wouldn't get rid of it (maybe he won't be able to), because it's barely perceptible yet seems so integral to his disposition.

“I don’t want to take a foreign language,” Lukas adds, as if both explaining away the coincidence as just that, a coincidence. They certainly didn’t plan to register for the same class.

“I think I will apply student council,” Tino says nervously.

Berwald shrugs. “I dunno yet. Maybe German.”

“Hey, look, Eurasian oystercatcher!” Mathias says, wildly throwing out his arm to point at an unusual bird. “On that note, do you guys want to come over to my house for dinner? My mom made millionbøf with pasta and buttermilk koldskål for dessert.”

“I guess so,” Lukas replies, perhaps a little too quickly for his liking. The truth is that his father’s friends have become more and more annoying, and for the whole summer he has been mooching off of his friends’ dinners and eating alone at cafes when he can’t find a household to invade. He’s devised a perfect schedule where he only has to be at his house for six hours a day, and not have to see his father hardly at all, but it’s still six hours too many.

“I’ll ask,” Berwald replies. "Probably yes."

“I can come, if it is not too much trouble,” Tino says politely.

“I wouldn’t have offered if it was, and yikes, Tino, have you put on sunscreen? You look kind of pink.”

Tino tilts his head in confusion. “What?”

Mathias somehow, in a hugely uncharacteristic display of considerateness, doesn’t ask something about where on earth is he from if he hasn’t heard of sunscreen, but instead tells him he has extra in his knapsack.

“What part of Finland are you from, Tino?” Lukas asks curiously. He can’t be from Helsinki or Turku or Lahti or any of the bigger cities.

“I was born in a little town near Guovdageaidnu, but I moved to Espoo when I was three,” he replies easily as he digs through Mathias’ heavily disorganized bag with careful fingers. Lukas and Mathias, who had for a moment there thought he was from some very northern part of Finland with traditional clothing and reindeer herding, are stunned into silence. Espoo’s the second biggest city in Finland. He certainly doesn’t act like a city kid.

“Oh, aurinkovoide. Sorry, I didn’t know the word for it,” Tino says cheerfully, and squirts some of the white liquid, a little separated from the hot sun, into the palm of his hand.

“Let’s go swimming, I’m getting too hot,” Lukas declares, and with a bit of a jumping start, dives into the water.

“Do you want to swim to the farther rock formation? It’s only 14:00,” Mathias asks him as he grabs his waterproofed backpack off the rocks.

“Is this safe?” Tino asks tentatively.

“Of course it’s safe, we’ve been doing this every summer since we were like nine,” Mathias says as he playfully dunks Lukas under the water, pushing him down farther with his feet on Lukas’ shoulders. Lukas opens his eyes in the darkness (his eyes are long accustomed to the salt water), and appreciates the cold as he swims a little deeper before allowing himself to bob to the top.

“Plus Berwald is a lifeguard, so if you drown he can do mouth-to-mouth on you,” Lukas points out, referencing a very memorable experience from last year, and Mathias cracks up.

“That wasn’t funny,” Berwald mutters.

“It was so.”

“What happened?” Tino inquires bewilderedly.

“There was this girl last summer who had a crush on him, and one time she was on a sailboat with her family and she got so excited to see him that she fell out of the boat.”

"He had to do mouth-to-mouth on her?” Tino asks, shoulders already beginning to shake with barely suppressed laughter.

“It was gross,” Mathias agrees, nose wrinkling in disgust. “But hilarious," he adds, brightening.

“She could have died,” Berwald reminds them, apparently the only voice of reason in the group today. “Expected better of you, Luk,” he says, although not seriously.

Lukas shrugs, fighting down giggles. “You shouldn’t,” is his simple reply.

“This weather is beautiful,” Tino notes as he floats for a second on his back before turning back onto his stomach and resuming his front crawl. “Have you ever brought a boat out here?”

“Lukas and Mathias tried to make a raft once, and nearly drowned,” Berwald puts forward tentatively.

It’s Lukas’ turn to blush, and to prevent anyone from noticing he dives underwater as far as he can, and when he comes back up, Mathias is describing the situation to Tino, who frankly looks terrified at the group that he’s gotten himself mixed up into.

“Yeah, so long story short, no, we’ve never brought a boat here.”

“My mom has big canoe. We should do that one day,” Tino suggests. “Although now I’m a bit concerned about your boat safety protocal.”

Mathias laughs, Lukas and Berwald both smile, and Tino seems to appreciate their pleased reactions. They finish swimming the kilometre or two swim to the other rock formation, and plop themselves on the rocks tiredly. Mathias and Tino both have backpacks, the latter’s is tied up in a plastic bag to prevent it from getting wet, and they share their water bottles. It’s rather hot for a Norwegian summer, and they all have to be careful not to get too dehydrated.

“I have sandwiches for all of us,” Mathias offers, unpacking the plastic container of 4 open face sandwiches. “I didn’t know what you wanted, Tino, so I just guessed. If you hate it you can trade with me,” he says casually, tossing Berwald’s roast pork smørrebrød and Lukas’ salt beef and tartar to their respective owners. For Tino, he and his mom had made a neutral cold cut on rye with some not too spicy mustard, since they weren’t sure if he would like some of their more elaborate creations.

“Thanks, Mathias, I was starting to get pretty hungry,” Tino notes, taking a bite of the sandwich. “This is really delicious!” he tells him politely after he finishes chewing.

“It’s a good thing you’re coming over, Lukas, because my mom needs more bread,” Mathias remarks with food in his mouth.

“Gross, chew with your mouth closed,” he snaps, and Lukas clamps a hand over Mathias' mouth for a brief second as if he is trying to train a small child or perhaps a puppy.

Before he can reply, Tino asks, a little incredulously, “You make bread for his family?”

Lukas bites his lip, because it sounds a bit weird out of context. He does. He’s been doing it since he realised that he’s really good at baking but he doesn’t really like eating, so he started a tradition of giving them different combinations of loaves each week on Sunday. Olive, pesto, whole grain, the works.

“Yeah, he does, isn’t that cute?” Mathias teases. “Wait until you see him baking with his barrette in his hair, he’s such a housewife.” In retaliation, Lukas snatches his sandwich and pushes him into the water. There’s no sense in ruining good food. He takes a bite out of it mostly just to spite him.

Mathias cackles and pushes himself back onto the rock. “Can I have my sandwich back?”

“What’s the magic word?”

“Please.”

“Here,” he says flatly, passing him back his lunch.

They finish the food quickly, and lounge around for a bit before returning to the water to play Marco Polo. Mathias makes Tino be It since he’s new, but he quickly manages to tag Berwald, who tags Tino back, who tags Lukas, and so on. The afternoon stretches into evening, and the precarious sun in the sky makes it clear that it’s time to go back to shore. Mathias’ mother has a strict be-in-from-the-water-by-19:00 rule, presumably to prevent drownings, kidnappings, or other unfortunate events, and Tino thinks his parents will worry if he doesn’t call them soon.

Lukas goes straight to Mathias’ house to start on the bread after changing out of his bathing suit, while his dad ducks out to the store to get some buttermilk. He puts the cross barrette back in his hair. He uses it to clip back his bangs, a testament of his childhood when his dad wouldn’t pay for haircuts. Somehow the trend stuck, and now the only time he’s seen without it is when he’s in the water.

“What type of bread are you making?” Mathias’ six-year-old sister Brita asks. She’s barely as tall as the countertop.

“I’m making some sponge bread for dinner,” he answers.

Ninety minutes later, Lukas enters the dining room with a basket of bread in his arms and hair tied back in a handkerchief, and the whole Køhler family yells, “Hurra fer deg, Lukas!” and begins a rousing version of the Norwegian happy birthday song.

Lukas nearly drops the pan he’s holding. He knew, sort of, that it was his birthday, but it hadn’t really registered that June 22 meant he was now fourteen instead of thirteen.

“Happy birthday, Lukas!” Mathias exclaims, clapping him on the back.

“Mathias made rødgrød med fløde for you, so we’ll be having that for dessert,” Anna, Mathias’ mom, tells him proudly, ruffling her son’s hair.

The doorbell rings, and Brita ushers in Berwald and Tino, happily informing them that it is Lukas’ birthday today.

“You didn’t tell us; otherwise I would have said something. Happy birthday Lukas!” Tino exclaims, hugging him, and he awkwardly returns the hug. He’s not used to being embraced, although Mathias does sometimes pick him up when he’s being especially annoying.

"Happy birthday,” Berwald adds a bit gruffly. By Berwald’s standards of normal speaking, that was practically a dramatic declaration of love.

“Thanks,” Lukas replies, a bit uncomfortably. He doesn’t being the centre of attention like this, so he’s immensely grateful when Anna asks them to sit down so she can bring out the millionbøf with pasta.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever met you before,” Anna says, nodding to Tino, who looks especially small seated next to Berwald, who’s fourteen and already built like an ox, hence his surname.

“My name is Tino Väinämöinen, I just moved to Larvik from Finland,” he says. “Thank you for the dinner, I’ve never had anything like this before.”

“That’s nice, we moved here from Copenhagen about ten years ago,” Mathias’ dad August replies.

“How are you liking Norway?”

“It’s beautiful. They took me out to the ocean, on the rocks. In Espoo we were never allowed out in the ocean, there were too many ships,” he says wistfully, and Lukas can see on his face that he misses living in Finland more than anything.

“Say something in Finnish!” Brita demands petulantly.

He looks a little taken back at the question. “Sure.” Then he speaks a few sentences (it sounds so different from the languages Lukas has heard- Norwegian, Danish, English, German).

Then everyone’s jaw drops as Berwald replies in the language, including Tino.

“Wow, I didn’t know you spoke Finnish!” Mathias exclaims, taking a large gulp of his watered down grape juice.

“My morsa went to school in Helsinki,” he replies with a shrug, looking side to side self-consciously.

As the meal finishes up, Anna and August get the two desserts, Koldskål with buttermilk and crushed vanilla cookies and the rødgrød med fløde that Mathias made for his birthday.

Meals at Mathias’ house are always a family affair, and they never cease to make Lukas feel as if he is part of it, until he goes home and realises that if his father was in their place he would never make his friends feel so accepted, or go out of his way to make sure that all of them were included in the meal and conversation. He would probably kick them out, come to think of it.

“Make a wish,” Anna says, handing Mathias a lighter and single candle to stick into the centre of the rødgrød med fløde. It sinks a little bit since the mix isn’t that thick, so he blows it out quickly and wishes secretly for a different family, a family like this.

“What’d you wish for?” Brita asks, a bit obnoxiously.

“He can’t tell or it won’t come true,” Mathias says, saving him the trouble of replying. Mathias’ family and logical extensions of his family finish the dessert, and Mathias asks if he wants to stay over for a sleepover. Lukas knows that he’s been accepting more and more of Mathias’ idiotic demands (he’s been spending so much time at his house that Brita once asked him if he was planning on moving in), and is terrified of the way that he wants to say “yes” more and more. All the time. If he let his impulses have their way, he would always accept Mathias’ invitations, every single one of them.

“Please? Please? It’s your birthday, after all!”

“Only because my father has guests over,” he finally concedes, and curses how Mathias has defeated his better judgement once again.

_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+

They’ve had sleepovers before, and they never end up staying awake into the wee hours of the morning as is seen frequently on television.

They watch a few movies, usually an eclectic mix of horror movies, relatively new releases like Toy Story 2, and trashy why-are-we-even-watching-this, and then they usually go to bed on the two sofas in the Køhler living room. This is exactly what happens this particular time, except for when Mathias flicks the lights off and tells him, “Happy birthday,” in a badly executed whisper, like he’s not sure if he’s sleeping or not. He isn’t, but he decides to pretend as if he is for the sake of things.


	3. Chapter 3

Year 1 of Ungdomskolde sort of just smacks them in the face. They finish the year tired of work and closer than they ever have been before. Another summer of lazy afternoons on the rocks, swimming, and eating dinner at Mathias’ house. Year 2 smacks them in the face too, except the slap stings less because they’re used to it by now. It’s like the words that Herr Bondevik tosses at Lukas. They barely hurt anymore, even the worst of insults and backhanded compliments designed to make him feel terrible about himself, to want to die, but Lukas doesn’t want to die and he certainly doesn’t feel terrible about himself. He feels great, actually.

Lukas gets a job at a bakery for the school year. It’s appropriate, really, and he saves up enough money so that he can buy a violin and he won’t have to use the school provided ones. He doesn’t have to work at the bakery during the summer because the owner’s kids come back from university during that time, so the arrangement is perfect.

That summer is memorable, even years later, for two main reasons. The first is that it is the first time ever that his father hits him beyond a drunken shove or a light smack on the shoulder. He slaps him across the face with an open fist, and shoves him into a cabinet. The glass panes shatter reflexively behind him. The awful sound will haunt him for years. His back aches and bleeds intermittently for weeks, and he wears a swim shirt to cover up the red welts. Which brings him to the second point.

Halfway through the summer, Tino finally makes good on the suggestion he made a few years ago about bringing his mom’s canoe to the water. Four teenage boys is probably past the carrying capacity, so it sits a little lower in the water than it should, but nevertheless they take it out to the rocks. When eventual boredom with the games they always play sinks in, Tino offers an idea.

“I think if you flip it over, you can go under the canoe because there is an air bubble,” he says, taking a bite of his sandwich.

“All right, Luka, come help me,” Mathias says as he starts to drag the canoe in the water.

“And why should I help you?” he drawls without getting up.

The answer is apparently that if he doesn’t, Mathias will scoop him up, ignoring his squawking, and toss him in the water as far as he can. He comes to the surface sputtering and coughing.

“You could have given me a little warning!” he shouts to the rocks.

“Where would the fun be in that?” Mathias counters with a grin as he slides the canoe into the water.

It only takes him a moment to flip it onto its belly, and Lukas swims over to check it out. He sucks in a breath and ducks under the submerged rim of the canoe. There is indeed an air bubble, he notes, and Mathias joins him a moment later. They breathe the same air for a moment before Mathias grabs him and pulls him close, and presses their lips together. Like everything they do, from Marco Polo to Capture the Flag all those years ago, the kiss is aggressive, and Lukas drags his teeth against Mathias’ bottom lip and threads his fingers through his tangled blond hair as Mathias slides his hands up the shirt, digging his fingers into his ribcage. Lukas is too distracted in stealing all of Mathias’ air from the depths of his mouth to realise that his fingers are nearing his very sensitive injury, and when his fingers press on the bruises, Lukas flails and flinches and pulls away all at the same time. Breathing laboured, Mathias looks hurt. The idiot. He didn't want to have to explain this.

“I’m injured,” he hisses very reluctantly. “That’s why I’m wearing this shirt.”

Mathias processes that for a second. “How did you get hurt?”

“Leave it alone, Mathias,” Lukas snaps.

“It was your father, wasn’t it!” Mathias hisses, too loudly.

The lack of oxygen is becoming physically suffocating and the small amount of air they’ve been allotted is depleting rapidly, but Lukas nods, looking everywhere but at Mathias, and ducks out from under the boat, panting. Mathias follows, putting his hands on his shoulders to stop him from turning around and leaving the conversation like he is itching to do. The look he is fixing him with is intense, like he cares too much, and Lukas looks away from the sheer emotion of it.

“You can stay with us. My mom likes you more than she does Brita and me. My dad loves talking to you. Please, you can’t stay there,” Mathias pleads with him, raising one of his pruney hands up to touch his cheek, feather-light and barely there, almost intimate.

“As much as I appreciate your _concern_ ,” he says, voice dripping with sarcasm and pulling away from Mathias’ hold. “I can deal with my current situation just fine.”

“Are you guys okay?” Tino calls from the rocks.

“Yeah, we’re fine!” Lukas calls, voice as normal as he can force it to be as he realises how strange they must appear right now. “Mathias is being a baby because I dunked him under the canoe.” He can tell that the fact that he is trivialising the exchange is pissing Mathias off, which is just fine.

Lukas and Mathias return to the rocks, and silently rock hop their way down to where Berwald and Tino are sitting on the picnic blanket.

“What do you guys think you want to be when you grow up?” Tino asks, reclining and exchanging a secret smile with Berwald while Lukas and Mathias look on in confusion.

“A doctor maybe,” Lukas mumbles noncommittally, but that’s more of a tentative idea than anything else. In truth, his favourite things to do are play violin and bake bread, but everyone has answered him without even a question on his part that those options aren’t “respectable” and he’ll never make a living doing something under those categories, and he’s all right at science so medicine seems like a decent career path. Research maybe. Less people.

“Hey, me too. I think I’d like to be a paediatrician,” Tino replies.

“I want to be a lawyer,” Mathias says.

“Really?” all three of them, even Berwald, say in varying levels of shock.

“Yeah. It sounds cool. What about you, Berwald?”

The teenager in question shrugs. “Scientist.”

“What kind of scientist?”

“I dunno,” he replies. “Something I don’t have to talk a lot for.”

Lukas laughs appreciatively and sits on the grey rock with his legs folded on top of each other. “We’ll have to see how it works out. We’re going to be in upper secondary school before we know it.”

“Where do you want to live?” Mathias asks.

“Turku or Helsinki,” Tino answers immediately.

“Doesn’t matter to me,” Berwald adds.

Mathias grins at all of them and belts out the lyric, “I’ll go wherever you will go,” from the Calling’s song, much to the amusement of his peers. Tino cracks up, shoulders rising up and down in dozens of little jitters.

It’s obviously meant as a joke, and all of them get a good laugh about it, but years later when Lukas reflects that three times Mathias has dropped his life and followed him to the ends of the earth, and even tells him that, “As long as you want me, I’ll be there,” Lukas will wonder if perhaps he missed the universe’s blatant foreshadowing.

_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+

Mathias and Lukas go to Oslo for one day in the summer. They go to museums and eat expensive pastries and lick the cherry filling off each other’s fingers in the restroom stall and make out against the tile wall like the horny teenage boys that they are. It’s a far cry from the smallish fishing town of Larvik, and Lukas tells himself that he’s going to live somewhere like this one day. Oslo, Stockholm, Malmö, Copenhagen, just any nearby city with a big population and lots of things to do. There are so many ways to escape the monotony here, and he feels almost powerful knowing that he could take a bus to any part of Oslo, do almost anything he wanted.

“Do you want to come over for a sleepover?” Mathias asks.

Lukas tells himself for the thousandth time that saying yes this one time won’t matter, but he reminds his impulse that he has to say no sometimes. So he does.

“Are you sure?” Mathias asks.

“I’m sure,” Lukas says confidently, and to wipe Mathias’ mind of any bad worst case scenario ideas that might be floating around his mind, he kisses him squarely on the mouth, putting one hand on each side of his face as he sucks the breath out of him and then leaves him gasping on the sidewalk by his house.

“See you tomorrow. We’re meeting Berwald and Tino at the beach, right?”

“No, they’re going somewhere else. Looks like it’s just you and me,” Mathias says.

“Great,” he says, a bit sarcastically.

“I’ll pick you up at around 9:00 and then we can walk over, is that good?”

“Sure. Good night.”

That night, three weeks after the incident that left Lukas forced to wear a swim shirt for a few weeks in the aftermath, Mr. Bondevik asks about his day, and it all goes downhill from there.

The topic transitions to vague attempts at pleasantries to how it is all Lukas’ fault that Mrs. Bondevik is dead, that due to his birth they hadn’t had enough money to buy the cancer medication she needed.

His father reminds him that he was a selfish child, that he screamed for attention even though his mother was so clearly dying, and in a fit of rage, throws a plate. It shatters at Lukas’ feet. He runs, but his father grabs him by the arm and hits him with a bottle. Once, twice, three, four times.

In the aftermath, Mr. Bondevik cries and says things like, “I’m so sorry, Lukas, your mother wouldn’t want me acting like this.”

“I don’t know what took over me, I’m such a terrible father.”

“This is such a stressful time for me, surely you can forgive me?”

It’s an endless cycle of lashing out and desperately crying and asking forgiveness, and Lukas learned about this cycle about abusive relationships segment in health class, but it doesn’t make it any easier to escape. Powerless in a situation he does not know how to handle, Lukas sleeps on the back porch and counts the minutes until Mathias is due to arrive in the morning.

And he does arrive, but even clueless Mathias notices that he’s wearing the swim shirt again. He makes it clear again that his offer still stands, but Lukas knows that his parents are considering getting a divorce and the last thing he wants to be is a financial or just a general burden. Besides, people would talk. They swim out to the rocks, much of the conversation unspoken.

“Take off your shirt,” Mathias orders as he takes off his and throws it on top of his backpack. "I want to see what happened to you."

“No,” Lukas replies stubbornly as Mathias approaches him warily

“Please,” he says roughly, and Lukas reluctantly complies. He does this only because he knows Mathias is imagining the worst possible scenario, and it might be worth the unpleasantness of showing him his wounds in order to stave off further questions or concerns. Unfortunately, Lukas apparently misjudged this situation. “Oh my god, _elskede_ ,” Mathias utters, words sound as if they were amputated straight from his gut. "I'll kill him- I'll fucking kill him," he decides, sounding serious.

"Don't lawyers have to obey the law?" Lukas counters solidly, trying to hide the fact that he is terrified by Mathias right now. The passion, the righteous fury- he is a grenade waiting to be launched into enemy territory, waiting for the right target. As much as he despises his father, he does not want Mathias facing a murder charge.

"He can't hurt you like that. Unacceptable," he replies firmly.

Lukas feels over-exposed, but they are in a solitary place. Years ago, when they unwittingly picked this place for hundreds of hours of hanging out on the rocks with Berwald, they appreciated the quiet, too far for the shore to be fully visible, and not near any major boat routes. The only visitors are birds and the occasionally adventurous sailboater- the water is rough out here, and the only reason they brave it is because they are such strong swimmers and they always have each other’s backs. All down his stomach, reddish purple bruises, the colour of Mathias’ rødgrød med fløde, and a certain section of ribs that feel like they may be cracked. The shards of glass have pierced bits of random skin, unluckily in the line of fire, but all in all Lukas allows himself a fibre of hope. He knows now with utmost conviction that he will leave as soon as he is able to, even if it means unsavory circumstances.

“You don’t deserve this, Luka,” Mathias says with an out of character seriousness. “This isn’t your fault."

“Of course it isn’t,” Lukas scoffs. He knows it isn’t his fault, because Mathias does stupider things to his parents, and they never beat him. Other parents don’t do this to their children, and a guest speaker told them that there was a special place in hell for child abusers. It isn’t his fault, and he knows it, but he does wish desperately that things were different.

“My parents called the police earlier in the year. My mom will call them again to tell them this happened, they can take pictures and prove to a jury that he deserves to be locked away,” Mathias tells him seriously.

“Last time nothing happened. My dad gambles with a lot of police officers.”

“Maybe it’ll work this time.” His optimism is touching but foolish.

“Somehow I doubt it. I play contact sports and take hard falls in gymnastics, it’ll be very easy for him to argue in his defence, especially to a sympathetic police officer not interested in making a report,” Lukas replies. “Besides he doesn’t do it often. Imagine you're the attorney defending him, you'd have quite an easy time."

“This isn’t fair.”

“Tell me about it.”

He and Mathias bask in the warm water for upwards of an hour, without really speaking to each other any farther (a personal record of silence, especially on Mathias’ part).

“You know, school is starting soon,” Mathias notes pensively, but he can’t keep his eyes or his mind off the bruises or the deep murderous feeling that has set into his chest, nestled beneath his lungs like a friendly parasite, feeding off his fury and packaging into a neat but dangerous solution.

“Don’t remind me,” Lukas replies sleepily. Academic pursuits are the last thing on his mind right now.

“Do you think we’ll go to the same upper secondary school?” Mathias asks lightly, moving to tread water next to Lukas.

“I dunno.”

“We better. I’d miss you too much otherwise!” Mathias says, squeezing him around the waist, careful to avoid any of his injuries.

“You’re such an idiot,” he murmurs half-heartedly, not even opening his eyes to properly seal his opinion. It’s too much of a nice day for being snippy.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Warning* Child abuse in this chapter becomes less implied/talked about and more actual, but this is the last chapter featuring his father for quite a while so you can skip this if you need to.

Lukas never really considered the importance of Berwald’s existence until he announced his parents were moving him to Kaliningrad for a summer, a weird bit of Russia stuck in between some European countries like Lithuania and Poland and Belarus. It hits Lukas that he never really appreciated Ber’s silent, taciturn presence, and usual voice of reason, in all of the ventures. Their swimming and rock hopping and exploring little villages nearby with no money in their pockets won’t be the same this summer without him.

Lukas hates that things are changing, because one change tends to reflect itself all over the place like a house of mirrors until everything is unrecognisable, and sure enough, Tino announces that his parents are sending him to boarding school in London next year, so his English can get better, and because they’re getting a divorce.

“I hate that we’re not all going to be together next year,” Mathias mutters, a bit angrily one day after school. They’re at Berwald’s house home alone (he’s been a latchkey kid since he could walk) eating carrot sticks while they watch cartoons and do their homework. Lukas is helping Tino learn to read music, and to perfect his Norwegian, and Mathias has such fluent English that sometimes even their American teacher is taken aback. It’s a cycle of helping and being helped, one that has been occurring for years, and Lukas isn’t sure what he will do with himself if he only has this idiot to keep him company.

“We have one week at the start of summer vacations before Berwald leaves,” Tino says seriously. “We have to make it count.”

“Let’s go to Copenhagen,” Mathias suggests, and he’s met with blank stares.

“C’mon. We all have jobs. The ferry to Hirthsals isn’t that expensive, and we can take a bus the rest of the way. Just for a day.”

“I like that idea,” Tino says tentatively. “Let’s do that on the last day. Last hurrah,” he says sadly.

“We can’t get down about this. We’ll see each other again soon,” Mathias says cheerfully, but no one else is so optimistic.

_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+

The week before Berwald’s temporary departure is a hectic one. They spend all their time together, even alternating houses for sleepovers (excluding Lukas’) and on the final day, they take a ferry to Denmark. They’re all wrapped up in rain jackets, since the weather hasn’t quite caught up with the fact that it’s summer holiday.

“I’ve never been on a boat this large before,” Tino says wistfully, taking Berwald’s hand. “The shore is so small from here.”

“Ew, you two are so sappy,” Mathias remarks teasingly. “Just get married already.”

“We could in the Netherlands, they just legalised a year or so ago,” Tino informs them.

“Or you could get a registered partnership in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland, Finland, and a few other places,” Lukas remarks from his position leaning against the railing of the deck.

They eat their packed lunches and appreciate the spray of the water from the bow of the boat, their peals of laughter reverberating off the decks as tourists look on in displeasure.

Copenhagen is beautiful. They’re walking along a sidewalk, a greyish canal separating them from blocks of brightly coloured, well-maintained houses. The bridges are gorgeous, and they take a bus to the Church of our Saviour.

“This pamphlet says that it’s a Baroque church, and that the famous spire was constructed under Frederik V,” Tino reads from the touristy pamphlet that a bored looking teenager with a nametag gives them at the entrance.

“I remember going here when I was little,” Mathias says, eyes lost to memories of nearly a decade ago when he lived here with his family.

Lukas can’t keep his eyes on anything but the ornate decoration of the church. He’s old enough to have realised his general apathy towards religion, like many of his peers, but he can certainly appreciate the beauty of Tessin’s altarpiece and the organ and the black tiled ceiling. Tino reads information from the tourist pamphlet the whole way up the corkscrew spire, and when they near the top Mathias points out the geographical features that look so beautiful from all the way here.

“That’s the Copenhagen harbour. And that’s the Christianshavns Kanal, we just walked along that on the way here.”

“What’s that body of water separating us from?” Tino asks, squinting at the map.

“Northern Amager, I think. Yeah, look at all the red roofs,” Mathias replies, leaning against the spiral staircase railing and appreciatively looking out on the vast city.

“How do you remember so much?” Tino inquires. “I barely remember living near Guovdageaidnu. Didn’t you move when you were four?”

“Yeah, but I came back every now and again to visit. Copenhagen is in my blood!” he exclaims jokingly, but it’s a little true. He hasn’t been here in years, but he was able to lead them through the best places of the city like a native, even knowing the names of avenues and which restaurants to eat at.

“I can’t believe this is it. I don’t want to go to England,” Tino says sadly.

“Kaliningrad doesn’t sound very fun,” Berwald agrees quietly. Lukas would kill to get out of here, although he would miss making fun of Mathias, but even still, he can’t understand why they aren’t a bit happier about their respective “predicaments”. He doesn’t say anything though; he understands the gravity of the moment. The wind picks up.

“We’re going to meet again, I promise, Tino,” Mathias says, smiling broadly. “One year when we’re thirty and we have jobs we’ll come back to the rocks for a day and just see how it feels.”

Tino frowns. “We’ll go to different universities, though. Different careers. Although maybe I’ll go to medical school with Lukas,” he says, smiling at him.

“Doesn’t matter,” he replies, eyes twinkling mischievously.

Tino can’t help but scoff. “Do you believe in magic?”

Lukas does. He remembers the folk tales that his mother read him about fairies and trolls and bridge spirits and evil queens, and he can’t help but cling to a few of those ideas. He doesn’t talk to fairies in his spare time, but sometimes in a field of clover or by a particularly scenic bridge in the middle of nowhere it’s hard not to believe that there are a few spirits watching over, guiding the place with a bit of charm and spell.

Their route back is significantly less symbolic and deep, and much more fun, because Mathias somehow acquires alcohol and it all goes downhill (or uphill) from there. On the upper deck where the wind is strongest, they laugh at bad jokes and reminisce like a group of uni kids about to graduate, never to see each other once again. And looking back fondly, Lukas at least has the comfort of knowing that his assumption hadn’t been correct.

“You’ll have to tell us how the UK is, I’ve always wondered what it’s like there,” Mathias mumbles to Tino (he’s half asleep and a bit tipsy).

“I will. London is such a large city, it will be a big change for me.”

“Just think of it like a big Helsinki, where no one speaks Finnish,” Mathias advises wisely, and Berwald, the only one who didn’t drink and who apparently is unaffected by the fact that it’s 1 in the morning, snorts.

“And it’s on the Thames, not the Baltic,” Lukas adds.

“Don’t forget the different holidays,” Mathias says, head falling onto the table. “They don’t eat weird candy like you do, probably.”

“I think it’s safe to say that London’s going to be very different from Espoo,” Berwald deadpans, and for a moment Tino (in his slightly drunk, tired state) looks confused. “But I’m sure you’ll do great anyway.”

“Wow, Ber, you’re so sentimental when you’re sober,” Lukas mocks, effectively doing little to qualm Berwald’s rocketing heartbeat as Tino looks at him with a broadening smile, hungry spark in his eyes.

The ferry blows its horn, signaling that it is docking in Larvik, and they all reluctantly get to their feet. Tino hugs Lukas tightly, and the alcohol must be doing a number on his brain because he feels pleased, and recalls his birthday a few years ago when he barely knew Tino. He’s not leaving now, but he will be soon, and it’s a matter of symbolism. Then he, Mathias, and Tino all collectively accost Berwald, who turns pink uncomfortably as they wrap their arms around him and wish him well.

“Have fun in Kaliningrad!” Tino calls.

“Learn Russian for us!” Lukas yells.

“Don’t forget to live a little, I hear the vodka is great over there!” is Mathias’ final sage advice as they wait for Ber’s parents to pick him up.

“Try not to tear out your hair,” Berwald advises Lukas, tilting his head to Mathias, who is oblivious to the jibe, and Lukas can’t help but smile.

“I’ll try. Don’t get mixed up in anything,” he warns, which turns out to be much better advice considering the situation Berwald is about to get himself into when he moves into that fateful urban apartment building.

Herr and Fru Oxenstierna pick up their son and say their goodbyes hurriedly, since they’ve got a very early flight in only a few hours. Tino gets picked up a few minutes later, but Mathias lives close enough to walk. His parents are out of town with his sister for her swimming competition in Oslo. Mathias unlocks the door clumsily and stumbles inside, kicking off his shoes messily in the foyer and tossing his coat onto the floor.

“If we weren’t so beat this would be a great time to have sex,” Mathias remarks.

“There’s always the morning,” Lukas deadpans, but he doesn’t remove his coat, because he doesn’t plan on staying very long. Mathias grabs Lukas by the waist and hauls both of them onto his bed, flailing his arm against the wall and somehow successfully smacking the light switch off.

“Good night,” Mathias says cheerfully, and Lukas rolls onto his side and elbows him in the stomach when the fool tries to put his arms around him. When he is certain that Mathias is a sleep, he gets up quietly, blindly puts his shoes on without the aid of any light, and walks back to his house.

Later that night, Lukas will wish he had stayed, because it is the anniversary of his mother’s death and his father doesn’t take the memory well, even after all these years. He doesn't remember because he didn't know her. Once he liked to pretend that he had- that he remembered her smile or her laugh or her steely eyes. Now he does not.

“You killed her,” he says blearily, slamming his drink on the counter to punctuate each word, and wiping tears from his eyes.

Lukas doesn’t feel any sympathy any more, or rather he would like not to. When he was young and impressionable, he used to believe that he was responsible. Now he knew better, and no longer spent whole afternoons staring at himself in the mirror, reminding himself that he had killed the person who had given him life.

When his father throws a plate at him, control fraying at the ends, as he sobs brokenly like the death is still fresh, Lukas decides as he keeps his face impassive as his father hurls ugly words and dishware at him.

“You don’t even care! I can see it on your face, you’re not even sad!”

“I don’t remember her,” he replies darkly. It was too long ago. He takes a carefully measured retreat for each advance his father makes.

“That’s not my fault, Lukas. You can’t go through your whole life blaming me for all of the things that don’t go your way. I’m not a scapegoat for your problems.”

“No, but I’m yours,” Lukas snaps back, which turns out to be a rather unfortunate choice of words because they resonate deeply on his father’s fragile mental state, already weakened by the calendar day, and Lukas gets a silver book end hurled at his skull.

Bleeding slightly from his forehead but thinking clearer than he ever has in his life, Lukas walks calmly to the stairs, and makes his way to his room.

"Don't you dare walk away from me!" His father screams.

Lukas barely edges his way into the room and locks the door, ignoring the pounding and sobbing against the oak surface. He grabs his bags that he always without fail has packed and stocked, ignoring the yelling and sobbing wreck that his father is making downstairs. First he throws out the rucksacks, then he vaults over the window sill, dusts himself off, and begins his trek. He knows his father won’t follow him, because he’s done this before, but this time he’s not going back. He will die before he returns here.

The eerie calm he feels is replaced with a rush, and he can't help the grin that threatens to split his face open. He laughs. It's going to be bad, from here on out, but Lukas knows he is capable.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Depending on your age of consent laws, they might be underage in this.

Lukas draws his jacket close around his chest. It’s raining, and not very cold in terms of degrees on the thermometer, but the wind chill is making for one hell of a frigid day. He is exhausted of hearing how his existence caused his mother’s death, and frankly he is old enough that he doesn’t believe it any more. Cancer kills thousands of people each year, and even with proper medication the chances for pancreatic cancer are slim.

He reaches into his backpack and pulls out a bag of granola. Like always, Lukas has a plan. He wouldn’t slip away from his house at 1:00 in the morning without one.

1\. Switch bakery shift to nighttimes

2\. Spend weekday nights at bakery, get required hours of sleep after school in library study room (No one goes to those anyway, and they are free to rent).

3\. Spend weekends at youth shelter.

He’s already removed his money from his bank account without his father’s knowledge, and collected the bare essential of belongings and carefully packed them in the backpack and carry on bag currently lying at his feet. He has soap, toothpaste, a toothbrush, five sets of clean clothes, laundry detergent, snacky non-perishable foods like granola and canned green beans, and his school supplies.

It’s not running away because his father told him to go, a thousand times over.

Tapping his foot impatiently, Lukas checks his watch again. It’s five minutes past when the bus was supposed to be here.

After six days, Lukas is sure than he can do this. He takes showers at the locker room at school when he can sneak in, washes his clothes at little establishments along his bicycle routes, and he doesn’t have to buy many groceries since lunch is provided for all students at no cost. He doesn’t have a mobile phone like some of the rich kids at his school do, but thus far his father has not contacted him. His only regret is that he didn’t do this sooner, and that sleep is so hard to come by.

Berwald comes back near the end of the summer, which distracts any of his acquaintances from noticing anything different about him.

“Did you make friends?” Mathias asks. “Were the Russian girls hot?”

“I don’t think I met any Russians. Well, except the Braginskys,” he amends, shifting uncomfortably in his seat.

“What was wrong with them?”

“Ivan was all right.”

“You’re not telling us something, Ber. We’ve known you long enough,” Lukas mocks, propping his feet up on the armrest of Berwald’s couch.

“His parents were mobsters. Pretty much whole apartment building was.”

“What? Seriously? Do you have a price on your head?” Mathias exclaims enthusiastically.

“You’re not going to get us killed, are you?” Lukas asks shrewdly.

“Didn’t piss anyone off,” Berwald answers with a shrug.

“Well that’s not surprising. Who did?” Mathias says excitedly.

Berwald’s eyes go out of focus, and he winces, remembering something unfortunate. “Toris, Lithuanian kid. Lived below my family. A few years younger than me.”

“What happened?” Lukas prompts.

“He and his friend Feliks tried to run away. Didn’t see Feliks after that, and Toris never looked at anyone after that. He had a lot of bruises, and a broken arm,” Berwald says, shuddering at the memory.

“Holy fuck!” Mathias exclaims. “Do you think Feliks got killed?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Berwald replies ominously. “He got caught going through papers a few times. Got beat up pretty bad.”

“So, all in all, you wouldn’t recommend that we take a similar trip?” Mathias asks a bit sarcastically as he opens Berwald’s fridge and selects a plastic container of mashed potato.

“Nope,” he replies, and looks at Mathias disapprovingly. “Was gonna eat that.”

“You snooze you loose,” he replies. “It’s good to have you back, Berwald,” he adds with potato in his mouth, and Lukas wrinkles his nose in disgust. “We missed you.”

Berwald grunts, not unhappily. “Have you all talked to Tino at all?”

“No. He left a bit after you did. He’s in boarding school, he might be back for the summer after.”

“Mm.”

“You had a crush on him, didn’t you?”

“None of your business,” Berwald says gruffly, not looking up from his hands folded on the table.

Lukas laughs, a little cruelly, at him. “Wow, your subtlety is palpable.”

“Doesn’t matter now, does it?” Mathias asks. “He’s gone, probably doensn't even remember you,” he adds easily.

Berwald’s face is as stony and void of expression as always, but his eyes narrow at Mathias’ rudeness, and stretching out a hand, he smacks him on the head.

“Jesus, a summer in Russia has made you freaking sensitive,” Mathias pouts, rubbing the crown of his head gingerly.

“Nah, just tired of your shit,” Berwald replies without any real heat, shrugging indifferently.

“Please, I’ve been tired of his shit for years,” Lukas says in camaraderie, understanding Ber’s struggles of dealing with Mathias’ antics perfectly.

“Oh, so harsh, Luka,” Mathias replies with a stupid grin on his face, pressing a mock-offended hand to his heart.

Berwald blinks suspiciously. “Did I miss something?”

“Just the best summer ever,” Mathias replies, voice a little singsong. “I bet the weather wasn’t that nice in Kalininininingrad,” he adds jokingly, adding about fifty extra syllables.

“You know what I mean.”

“I haven’t got a clue.”

_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+

“You have soap in your hair,” Mathias points out, plucking out a shaving of the powder blue surfractant from Lukas’ hairline.

_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+

“You’ve got flour all over your clothes, Lukas. Is the bakery working you too hard?” Mathias asks jokingly.

“Shut up, you’re not the epitome of neatness either,” Lukas replies defensively.

_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+

In the end, it’s Berwald who figures it out- he may be quiet but he’s certainly not oblivious, and definitely not stupid. It’s been exactly two months, and Lukas is shoving dried fruit into his backpack when the lunch lady’s back is turned, and Berwald makes eye contact with him. There isn’t concern or disgusting sympathy hidden in the impassivity of his face, just determination and a solid resolve.

“It’s been going on a while,” Berwald deduces later, when they’re alone in the music room. Berwald plays piano (beautifully), and they’re working together on a lovely piece for showcase at the end of the year. “This obviously isn’t the first time you’ve stolen food from the cafeteria.”

Lukas tucks his violin against his collarbone, resting his hands in their proper place. “It’s been two months,” he says. He knows better than to try lying.

“Why didn’t you tell Mathias when I was gone?”

Lukas could list a thousand reasons, and struggles to come to terms with one socially acceptable enough to share. He didn’t want to be dependent on Mathias, he didn’t want to reinforce any misguided impressions he might have about the nature of their relationship, he didn’t want to show weakness. That last one is probably the best answer, but Lukas would sooner die than admit that to anyone, even himself. “He’s just so annoying.” It’s a superficial response, and Berwald knows that’s not true, but he doesn’t ask for any more information. He doesn’t demand to know why he left, if he was being abused, he doesn’t get passionate.

“Here’s my house key. Tell your boss you’re going to switch back to day shifts.”

“How did you-“

“Flour.”

“You’re amazing,” Lukas exhales, and then coughs on his breath. He can’t believe he just said that aloud.

“Don’t make Mathias jealous,” Berwald chides, turning around to lean against the piano.

Lukas scoffs and rolls his eyes. “Like I care what that idiot thinks.”

“If you didn’t, you would have told him you were homeless a few months ago,” Berwald says. Logic irrefutable, as always, and Lukas sighs in frustration.

“Whatever. Have you got your sheet music for Salut d’Amour, Op. 12?’ Lukas asks.

“Sure. Turn on the metronome, would you?”

Tick tock, they practice their piece and Lukas can’t help but appreciate the excellent friend he has in Berwald.

_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+

Lukas doesn’t tell Mathias that he’s living with Berwald, which is a disaster waiting to happen, but so was living in youth shelters and the bakery he works at and local gyms.

“Do you want me to explain this to you?” Mathias asks as Lukas stares in bewilderment as his nearly failing grade quiz in English. It’d been a grammar quiz (vocabulary had always been his strong suit) on compound possession and more complicated forms of verb agreement.

“I guess,” Lukas concedes, because their English teacher has a test scheduled tomorrow and unless he agrees, he doesn’t see how else he is going to understand this.

Mathias leans from a standing position next to Lukas, who is currently occupying his desk and chair. “For this first section, it has to do with ownership. If we’re talking about a house, for example, if it’s Emma and Tessa’s houses, that means that they share ownership of more than one house. But if you say Emma’s and Tessa’s houses then that means they each own separate houses.” Lukas nods slowly in understanding. “What about this part?” he asks, acutely aware of Mathias inching closer to him than necessary to help him with grammar, but he decides to play along. For now, at least.

“Words like ‘the team’ and ‘the family’ are conjugated like they’re singular, but things like ‘you and me’ would be ‘are’ instead of ‘is’,” Mathias drawls, sliding his hand down from resting innocently on his shoulder blade to his lower back.

The heat of his hand radiates outward as he snakes it around Lukas’ waist and pulls him up from the chair. Lukas crushes their lips together, interlocking his fingers with the knots of Mathias’ hair, sliding his left hand down to the lean muscles above his hipbones. Mathias takes Lukas’ face softly in his hands (too softly, Lukas wants him to tear at his clothes and leave score marks up and down his skin). The pace, his fingers tracing circles lower and lower, is tantalisingly slow, and Lukas kicks him, not too forcefully, in the shinbone. In response, he picks him up from the waist and tosses him onto the bed. Scrambling to get into a better position, Mathias grins at him and chuckles as he resumes the slow teasing.

“Jesus, how long does it take you to get it up?” Lukas taunts, hoping to expedite the process, but Mathias just smiles and continues. He licks a stripe down from his pulse point (Lukas is embarrassed how suddenly he gasps) to his clavicle, kissing the endpoint, and abruptly slides his hands to his inner thighs, helping Lukas wriggle out of his trousers from his position on the bed. Mathias looms over him (they can both detect the predatory spark in his eyes), and spreads Lukas’ legs. Sliding his underwear off with a stupid playful smirk on his face, Mathias leans forward and slides his mouth from the tip to the base.

He applies kittenish licks around the tip, and Lukas groans in frustration. “Come on, you idiot.”

“What, you don’t enjoy this?”

Lukas is about to reply peevishly that no, he doesn’t appreciate the senseless waste of time, when the object of his constant annoyance takes his cock halfway into his mouth, the sucking making obscene sounds that even though it’s the twentieth or so time they’ve done this, still feels embarrassing. His head falls back and his hands automatically go to thread themselves in his hair. In response, Mathias grabs his two wrists in one of his hands and pins it above them on the headboard, and heat pools in Lukas’ stomach, pushing lower until his inner thighs are just screaming for him to just put it in already.

“Aw you’re so cute when you’re impatient, Luka,” Mathias teases, stripping off his own shirt and hopping off the bed for a moment to shuck off his trousers.

A few minutes later, Lukas is on his back with one of his legs held above Mathias’ shoulder as he works out the angle. Mathias rolls the condom on his cock and rips open the packet of lube with his teeth, warming it up between his hands as he looks down at Lukas, laboured breathing but still manages to keep his face stone cold, with a pleasant smile on his face.

“Ah, fuck,” Mathias curses, pushing Lukas’ leg out at a more diagonal angle, and thrusts inside in a single imprecise motion. It burns for only a second, before the pain dissipates and the pleasure goes into overdrive. Lukas allows his eyes to fall close, writhing and arching his back off of the sheets as Mathias’ times his long slow thrusts almost like a musician. They’re are like pleasurable stabs, a few of them even graze a cluster of nerves that Wikipedia calls the prostate, and Lukas slams backwards almost like he’s been struck and reels. Nerve endings flaring with so much pleasure that it’s almost a little overwhelming, a little painful, and Mathias grabs Lukas’ cock in between them as he sets up a decent rhythm of thrust in, arch up, pull out halfway, again. They both come and Lukas gasps tiredly as Mathias pulls out and falls onto the bed beside him, breathing hard.

“You’re pretty great, Luka,” Mathias says, laughter bubbling up from his stomach and out from his lips.

“I wish I could say the same for you,” he replies. “Although that was rather nice. I’m going to take a shower.”

“That’s a pretty high compliment coming from you.”

“Don’t get used to it.”

Lukas knows Mathias’ house better than he does Berwald’s, who he now lives with. He even knows how to work the complicated shower faucet. The hot water falls upon him (the water pressure sucks) and Lukas closes his eyes. He hates that after they have sex, without fail he always considers ways to push Mathias away. To reassert himself as completely independent of Mathias’ whims and stupidity. He hates this fact about himself, that he always tries to be the dominant pushing force in the push-pull of a romantic relationship. Even calling it that feels gross on his tongue, like he needs to explain away how it happened without either of them really trying, how it’s going to end soon. Somewhere in an unspoken and unthinkable part of his head Lukas wants to stay with Mathias for a long time. No, he tells himself as he lathers his sweaty hair with shampoo, he mustn’t think like that.

“I have to shower too, you know,” Mathias reminds him, rapping his knuckles on the mostly closed door.

“Well, I have to wash this soap off,” Lukas snaps back, irked to have his thoughts interrupted.

“I could help with that,” he replies, smile spreading across his face as he pushes the door open and starts shedding the little clothing he’s wearing.

Lukas uncharacteristically doesn’t protest, and they shower together for a few minutes before resorting to silly pranks and Mathias bursts into giggles. Lukas grabs a towel from the rack beside the sink vanity, and steps out.

“Can you get the groceries?” he asks from the shower.

“I suppose,” Lukas replies, voice drawling, but he doesn’t mind. It’s better than watching some mindless television on the couch. He grabs the list pinned to the corkboard by the refrigerator, shrugs on Mathias’ new jacket since he forgot/doesn’t own one, and takes his bicycle to the grocery store, only a few blocks down the street.

“Wow, hey Lukas, it’s been a while since I’ve seen you about,” Liv, a girl at his school says.

“Hi,” he replies. “How have you been?”

“Good,” she replies. “This is some ugly weather we’ve been having,” she notes, tilting her head to the snowstorm outside.

“Doesn’t usually snow this early,” he agrees, and checks out the milk, eggs, aluminium foil, and lunch meats at the counter. Anna always reimburses him if he brings her the receipt, and sometimes she gives him a little money extra, which he appreciates because he’s trying to save up money so he’ll have enough to pay rent on an apartment when he finally turns eighteen.

He pulls the jacket, which is a little too big for him, tighter around his chest and wraps the woollen scarf over his face. Lukas clips on the helmet over his knit hat and carefully rides home on the side of the road, careful to avoid slipping on the slushy snow.


	6. Chapter 6

It is snowing, so Mathias lights a fire in the hearth and settles himself at his desk to finish his homework. It’s a little old-fashioned, but Lukas appreciates the warmth and the glow that fills the room, a perfect environment for studying.

Suddenly, the phone attached Mathias’ living room wall rings. Mathias reaches from the desk and picks it up.

“Hey, who is this?” he asks cheerfully, leaning back in the chair and untangling the cord from around the lamp.

“Can I speak to Lukas?” Berwald asks, and although Lukas couldn’t hear what the person said or even know who they are, he can see the jealousy that flashes in his eyes. He holds the phone out to him, and Lukas unfolds his legs and takes it, pressing it to his ear as he watches Mathias watch his face for signs of a reaction.

“Sorry for calling, but my mum wants you home for dinner.”

Lukas forces his features to remain completely impassive. “Okay. Bye.”

“Bye.” He takes a few steps and returns the phone to its place on the wall.

“What did Berwald want with you?”

Lukas rolls his eyes. “I have to go, see you tomorrow,” he says, grabbing his bag from the sofa and slinging it over his shoulder, sore from hours of kneading bread for pre-holiday orders.

Mathias gets to his feet, crossing his arms defensively. “Why are you leaving in such a hurry?”

“Don’t you trust me?”

“Of course I do, Luka,” he replies without thinking, because he dos. He trusts Lukas more than he does some of the immediate members of his family. Even though he can be an icy bastard if the timing is wrong, Mathias knows he would trust Lukas with his life when it came down to it.

“Then this won’t bother you to know that Berwald’s family has been providing me with room and board,” he challenges, waiting for the inevitable yelling and shouting, the impassioned reaction that will give him an excuse to give Mathias the cold shoulder for a few weeks.

But instead he gets the soft eyes. Great, he doesn’t have time for an emotional heart-to-heart, let alone the fact that it’s the last thing he wants right now. “How long?”

“That doesn’t matter,” Lukas snaps. He knows he’s been caught.

“Were you homeless?” he asks, voice teetering on the edge.

Lukas sighs and slumps against the wall with a despondent haze in his eyes. “I took night shifts at the bakery, youth shelters on the weekend.”

“Oh, min elskede,” Mathias says softly, taking Lukas in his arms. Lukas, for his part, has never been embraced so thoroughly, and their hearts beat in succinct unison for a few silent moments. “Why didn’t you come to me when Berwald was in Kaliningrad? I would have taken you in, I never would have let you go through that if I had known.”

Lukas was expecting rational anger (if their places would have been switched, he would have broken up with Mathias on the spot for being so foolish and acting like such a martyr). He never expected Mathias to call him such an endearing term, to hold him tightly and breathe hot breath on the back of his neck.

“I’m sorry,” Lukas says, voice cracking slightly, and it’s the first of maybe two or three whole times (thus far) that Lukas explicitly and verbally apologised for an action he committed in their relationship.

It occurs to Lukas later as he’s carefully biking to Berwald’s house in the snow, still wrapped up in Mathias’ winter coat, that the situation could have gone much differently. Maybe it should have. Lukas spent two and a half months living between his job, a youth shelter, and once or twice sleeping in the school locker room if he could sneak in. That wasn’t okay; especially when he knew for a fact that Mathias would take him in no questions asked if he did in fact ask.

“Food’s cold,” Berwald says by the time he gets home.

“Sorry, the roads were bad,” Lukas replies, opening the pantry to locate a non-caffeinated tea.

“We were lucky that your friend picked up the phone, otherwise we wouldn’t have been able to get a hold of you,” Noah, Berwald’s father, says innocently. Lukas doesn’t like that Berwald automatically assumed he’d be with Mathias, even though for that particular case it was true. He could have been at work, getting groceries, practicing violin, a number of things, but he doesn’t say anything more on the matter.

“Lukas, have you spoken to your father since you left?” Noah asks him.

“No,” he replies truthfully.

“Mathias’ mom, Anna, you know her, she called me today and told me that he asked for your safe return.”

Dread and fear and pain smacks him in the face, and he feels foolish for letting himself believe that his life would go on like this: living with the Oxenstierna family while he gets groceries for the Køhler family and allows Mathias to pin him down on the bed while they put their mouths together and keen up against each other with moans on their lips. It’d been stupid to think that this could go on for the rest of his education, that his father wouldn’t eventually miss having someone to bully into submission. He inhales carefully, and it takes a lot of effort to keep his face calm. Exhale. Inhale.

“Okay. I’ll pack my bags.”

“Hold on a second! He hurt you didn’t he?” Noah is a tall, strong, and intimidating man, much like his son, and being in a room with both of them and having to confess something to this degree is nothing short of emotionally taxing. Two pairs of eyes, one set blue and the other light brown, but both unwavering, watch him.

“Yes,” he says. He doesn’t add that it was years of emotional one-ups and manipulation before it ever came to drunken strikes and punches (and afterwards Herr Bondevik would cry on the floor and demand forgiveness, promise he’d never do it again). Even then over a period of a year it only happened a few times (but then again, he wasn’t home enough for it to happen more).

“Physically?”

“Yes,” Lukas replies, remembering all too clearly the bruises and cracked ribs.

“Then you’re not going anywhere,” Noah tells him simply, patting him on the back with too much force in what is clearly meant to be an affirming statement of reassurance.

Lukas jumps and finds that, although he is much less optimistic, he is hopeful.

 

 

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It turns out simpler than anyone expected. Noah Oxenstierna, in all his 195-centimetre glory, “sits down” for a “nice” conversation with Mr. Bondevik, and they “come to an agreement”. Both Berwald and Lukas suspect that this means Noah threatened Mr. Bondevik into letting Lukas live with them, but neither of them particularly cares how the finer details were worked out.

Mathias and Berwald are labouring away on their Salut d’Amour, Op. 12 (Elgar) one day in the music room, trying to get the finer points down in time for the end of the year arts showcase, when a girl (second chair flute in the local orchestra, but Lukas doesn’t know her name) asks if it’s true that they’re “living together”.

“Where on earth did you hear something so stupid?” Lukas asks her, rolling his eyes.

“My sister said he saw you going to Berwald’s house with a suitcase,” the girl replies uneasily.

Lukas laughs coldly, resting his violin casually on his chin as if this isn’t bothering, embarrassing, mortifying him at all. “If I were you I wouldn’t put so much stock in gossip.”

“Sorry I brought it up. You don’t need to be so sensitive,” she says with an unperturbed shrug. “My name is Elina,” she sticks her hands out to Lukas, who shakes reluctantly. “I know you’re working with Berwald on Salut d’Amour, but do you think you would mind doing the intro with me? We could use another violinist, and I’ve heard you’re very good.”

Lukas is flattered but not about to be cajoled into doing something he does not want to do, especially with so little time before showcase. It’s barely enough time to put something together of much substance. “What did you have in mind?”

“Just the first movement of H.598.”

“C.P.E. Bach? That’s an uncommon one, I don’t think I’ve ever heard it played before.”

“That’s all right, we’re just opening for showcase, and the bit we’re doing is less than three minutes.”

“If you get me the sheet music I can start learning my part,” Lukas finally agrees.

“Good,” she replies, sliding a thin packet of sheet music across the piano towards him. He flips through it and shrugs approvingly. It doesn’t look too difficult, and it won’t take him too much time to master it.

“This is set up for a duet, you said there were other violinists?”

“We’ve remixed it a bit,” she admits. “There are other flutists as well,” Elina adds.

“How many?”

“Three of each instrument, now that you’ve agreed.”

“A bit non-traditional,” Lukas says, and offers no further opinion or comment regarding H.598. He turns to Berwald, turns the metronome on, and taps his foot in line with the rhythm as they run through their piece again, like clockwork. Berwald doesn’t make any mistakes that he can detect, and other than holding a note a bit too long, Lukas deems his performance decent.

“That was good,” Berwald grunts, cracking his knuckles.

“Yeah,” Lukas replies, and the alarm dings in the music room, letting them know it’s time to go to their next class, which for Lukas, is religious studies. They’re learning about Hinduism right now, which is a welcome change from the Christianity unit they’d been doing for a few weeks prior to this.

“Hey, Luka,” Mathias says as they return to their homeroom classroom, which is currently occupied by about half of their class and Herr Forseth, the religious studies teacher, who pushes his cart to the front of the classroom and starts passing out already marked tests. Their seats are organised by alphabetical order of surname, since he is the strictest teacher in the school. He doesn’t let them pick their own places like all the others do, and they have to stand up to speak to him. Talking amongst each other is forbidden. He is a fair grader, though.

“God dag, Herr Forseth,” the class says in complete unison as they get to their feet once he returns to the front with his arms crossed expectantly.

He lets them stay standing for a few minutes, before he turns his back to them and begins writing on the chalkboard. The class returns to their seats, and open their notebook and three-ring binders.

1\. Matsya

2\. Kurma

3\. Varaha

4\. Narasimha

5\. Vamana

6\. Parashurama

7\. Rama

8\. Krishna

9\. Buddha

10\. Kalki

“Divide up into two teams, whichever team can correctly identify all of these avatars of Vishnu the fastest will receive two points of extra credit on their last test for each member,” he tells them, and walks down the isle between the two halves of the classroom, two columns of desks (two students at each desk) as he pushes his thick glasses up the bridge of his nose. “Go ahead, push your desks together, we will be doing team battles for whole class,” he informs them, clapping his hands together impatiently as they leap from their seats and scurry to drag their backpacks to the far wall.

Lukas does well in religious studies class, but he’s got nothing on Mathias- he may be lacking on some basic facets of common sense, but anything humanities (Danish, Norwegian, English, literature, religion, arts) he can learn faster than anyone else. Last year when they had to take a public speaking seminar, the teacher told him he should be a politician.

Mathias, to his credit, immediately quickly writes the correct answers on a piece of loose leaf paper for their team, and runs to the front of the room to hand the paper to Herr Forseth, who looks at him appraisingly.

“This is correct,” he proclaims as most of their team slaps Mathias on the back good-naturedly.

“This isn’t fair!” an especially bold student says from the other side.

“Maybe studying for the last test would have helped both your grade and your participation in this friendly game,” Herr Forseth replies through his teeth, and the boy turns pink and looks away from the chalkboard.

All in all, the class finishes with only one match out of sixteen won by the other side of the room.

“You don’t have to be jealous, Luka,” Mathias says as the Herr Forseth leaves the room at the end of class and they wait for their gymnastics teacher to come take them to the field.

“I’m not jealous. I’m better at science. You got a 4 on your earthquake and tectonic plate test.”

“A 4+!” Mathias exclaims. “I was sick that day,” he sniffs in pseudo-offense.

“Somehow I don’t remember you being in anything other than perfect health,” Lukas says in a low voice so their classmates can’t overhear. He lets his words trail off, fingers rubbing the wooden tabletop with a half-smirk on his face, allowing Mathias’ mind to catch up and recall their after school extracurricular practice, which had been _especially_ memorable.

They have two gymnastics teachers, one for boys and one for girls since obviously the locker rooms are different, but otherwise the whole homeroom practices gymnastics in the gym, where there are old raggedy mats, a large padded area for practicing new techniques, and a few sets of apparatuses donated by members of the city- like uneven bars, and even a balance beam.

Their uniforms are boxy white tee shirts, formfitting black leggings, and athletic shorts striped in the school colours. They’re pretty hideous, but effective. Herr Bruun and Fru Gaarder lead them in stretches, warm up exercises, and a few laps before splitting them off into groups. Both Mathias and Lukas are very good at gymnastics compared to many of their classmates. Their school is kind of old-fashioned in that they have kept a gymnastics requirement instead of moving on to competition sports as classes, but a few years ago a kid got killed in hockey and no one helped him since they were “too caught up” in the heat of competition, so here the established curricula is non-competition sports. Which means swimming in the winter and gymnastics in the autumn and spring.

Right now Lukas is working on a new dismount on the beam, a back handspring two feet back tuck, which Elina is working on as well. Their first attempts on the mats, not on the beam, go well, and when they think they’ve got the combination down they use the low beam for some prep.

“I’m having a party at my house after music showcase. Do you want to come?” Elina asks him after swiping the sweat off her forehead and taking a sip from her water bottle.

“I dunno, maybe,” he replies non-commitally.

“I’m inviting Mathias. He is presenting it,” she prods.

“What?” Lukas asks, unable to restrain his surprise and fighting down irritation.

She blinks at him. “He’s the emcee. His teacher asked him to, since he’s good at public speaking or something. And people think he’s funny.”

Lukas snorts. “Great, so we’ll get to listen to his stupid jokes the whole evening.”

“It’s a potluck party, after the show. You’ll need to bring a dish,” Elina tells him, even though he never really agreed to come. “Now let’s see the dismount, you can go first.”

Lukas isn’t nervous; he doesn’t usually get scared about “trivial” things like flipping around on a balance beam. He cartwheeled neatly to 2/3 away from the end of the beam, spun and completed the technique, and barely a moment later he’s landing on his feet barely a metre away from the base of the balance beam.

“Nice!” Elina exclaims. “We’ll see if I can match that!”

She does, and they take turns on the beam before Fru Gaarder clangs the bell to alert that groups need to switch to a different station. They’re grouped roughly by ability, so Mathias joins their group a moment later (he’d been helping out on the uneven bars) so they can do endurance training on one section of the mat, with timed handstands, push-ups, crunches, and skipping rope.

“Mathias, after showcase there’s going to be a party at my house, wanna come?” she asks.

“Sure!” he exclaims. “Are you going, Luka? According to my emcee packet you’re doing a piano-violin duet with Berwald,” he says, voice a little strained from the exercise.

“I joined the introduction group as well, with Elina and some other violinists and flutists,” he says as he begins untangling a jump rope from the mass of coiled lines practically macraméed into a few dozen knots.

“I’m looking forward to it,” Mathias remarks, as easily as he says everything, and Lukas realises that it’s only three weeks away, and a week after that they leave for summer break. Everything is happening so quickly, because after summer vacations they’ll be going to Videregående skole, which is technically optional but for all purposes of practicality, is nearly mandatory.

Fru Gaarder rings the bell again, and they switch once more, this time to the uneven bars. Lukas catches himself appreciating the way that Mathias’ tee shirt comes up and exposes a strip of toned muscle. He curses his stupidity, and makes a point of not showing any shock on his face when Mathias does an especially difficult release, and then dismounts nearly flawlessly.

Elina goes next, and as she’s covering her hands with chalk and strapping on her hand guards by the bin, Mathias nudges Lukas playfully.

“You’re not as subtle as you think you are,” he taunts.

“You’re an idiot.”

“Maybe, but she did ask me how long we had been dating.”

Lukas’ mouth falls open in shock and can’t help the stupid schoolboy blush that colours his cheeks. “No. She didn’t.”

“Like I said, you’re not very subtle. You should have seen yourself earlier,” he says, lowering his voice to a whisper and crowding his mouth close to Lukas’ ear and shocking the sensitive skin there with a heavy exhale. “You were practically asking for me to kiss you, right there in front of everyone.” Lukas hates how his cock jumps in interest at the idea. He is not getting an erection in gym shorts; he simply isn’t, so he fixes Mathias with a glare of steel and indifference, and turns away to push up onto the bar just as Elina dismounts.


	7. Chapter 7

“Oh goodness, you two are both so handsome! Let me take a photograph,” Mathias’ mom says. They’re both relatively dressed up for showcase, and Lukas, although he would sooner die than admit it out loud, thinks that Mathias, for his part, looks pretty hot with his hair combed semi-neatly and in the dark grey blazer. And the dark dress pants do wonders for his already long legs.

Lukas has resisted Anna’s attempts to make him take the hair clip out of his hair, but he had agreed to part his hair and attempt to brush some of the knots out.

“Your tie looks terrible,” Lukas remarks as Anna leads them out the front door so she can satisfy her desire for a picture of them.

“You wanna redo it for me?” Mathias asks with a teasing smile, loosening the knot and pulling it over his head.

The tie is a deep navy colour and of nice quality (probably his dad’s, there’s no way Mathias would pick out something like this or spend money on it), and Lukas savours the way his fingers touch the bare skin above the collar of his crisp light blue button-down as he completes the knot.

“Come on!” Anna says impatiently, and Lukas reluctantly stands with Mathias in front of their little brick house. She has ancient camera, and puts it on a tripod with a timer while she runs inside to fetch her wallet from the upstairs.

Mathias, like the mischievous idiot he is, grabs Lukas in the ribs and tickles him as he plants a kiss on his cheek. Lukas is in fact ticklish, and he can’t control the smile that splits across his face for a brief second as Mathias wraps his arms around him. As soon as the camera clicks and spits out the photo, Mathias sprints to get it before Lukas and giggles, holding it up so he can see it but too high for him to snatch it out of his hand. It’s frankly rather embarrassing, but Lukas does his part to look indifferent.

“Every time you try to tell me that we’re not together, I’m going to show you this photo,” Mathias proclaims with a grin, opening his wallet and sliding it carefully into one of the translucent pockets that are usually reserved for children or wives or close family.

Lukas grabs Mathias’ tie and pulls him down to his height, which is only about 5 centimetres of difference, and is about to hiss something into his face, but they hear the front door start to open and they jump apart, Mathias rubbing the back of his head sheepishly. He’d like to tell his mother that he’s bisexual, but she seems so innocent of those kinds of things (once she walked in on Mathias holding Lukas down on the bed and she chided them for wrestling, saying that they could hurt themselves). He will eventually, obviously, but now isn’t the time to spring something like this on her.

Anna drives them to the school, which was decorated by the vast majority of the school clubs in crepe paper winding around the railings of the staircases, balloons in the lobby and floating around randomly in select hallways, and gaudy signs drenched in glitter telling visitors where the washrooms and auditorium is.

“Are you ready?” Elina asks him, removing the flute from her lips as all of the students involved swarm around in the music room, warming up on their various instruments.

“Yeah,” he answers. He’s a bit nervous, especially since they’re doing the intro.

“We have to be behind the stage in ten minutes,” she informs him, checking her watch.

“All right,” Lukas answers, taking a deep breath and taking his bow from the compact black bag he uses for all his musical equipment. The lyrics of a dozen popular songs and the notes from a dozen different musical instruments fill his ears, but he forces himself to focus on tuning up and doing a few easy warm up chords. A few minutes early, he, Elina, and the rest of their flutist/violinist crew go backstage, where they can hear Mathias introducing the program.

“We’ve prepared a nice mix of classical music, popular songs, and popular songs remixed with classical accompaniment, so hopefully there should be something for everyone. You’ll notice the chairs aren’t set up like a typical auditorium, they’re all pushed to the walls. Some of these songs will certainly make you want to dance, and we didn’t want people stuck in their seats when they could be hitting the dance floor!”

There are several chuckles from the audience, and Mathias continues (Lukas can almost see the grin on his face) with, “Our introduction is a piece by C.S. Bach, who is not the famous one, called H.598, performed by Elina Naas, Lukas Bondevik-“ he lists the rest of the names, and although Lukas has practiced the piece with them for a few weeks he still doesn’t know them very well, so they don’t sound familiar.

With the stage lights hot on the back of his neck, they all step onto the stage in a line as they planned, while the cooking club produces hors d'oeuvres and sets them on the tall circular tables scattered around the room while they begin. This isn’t a traditional type of music setup, which is exactly the way the showcase has been planned, so they don’t sit in chairs and dress in all black with serious expressions on their face. Lukas is serious though, as he nearly always is, and the three minutes whirls by and then they exit the stage to make room for a group of students singing an a cappella version of The Reason by Hoobastank.

“Wow, that was a beautiful and fitting introduction to the rest of our evening,” Lukas hears Mathias say sincerely with a certain flourish in his voice, as they leave through the back of the stage towards the music room, and heat swells in his chest. The way to a man’s heart is music, at least for Lukas, and hearing such praise lumped onto their performance makes nothing short of butterflies appear in his stomach.

“That was great, you all,” Elina says, packing up her flute in its hard plastic case and taking a sip of flavoured water.

They can hear hysteric laughter from the auditorium.

“He’s actually a pretty good emcee,” one of the other violinists remarks casually.

Lukas doesn’t even justify that with a response, and leaves to find Berwald, since they could use a warm up session. He finds him in the bathroom, sitting on the countertop with a book of sheet music on his lap.

“What are you doing in here?”

“Too loud,” Berwald replies with an uncomfortable shrug. Lukas abruptly remembers how claustrophobic he is, and nods in understanding.

They’re not going on until nearly the end, so they’ve got time. Lukas decides he’ll join him in his voluntary solitary confinement, and pushes himself onto the countertop. They sit in silence, because they don’t really have to speak to each other, it’s not awkward and their methods have been tested and tried by years of friendship.

“We should probably go back,” Lukas says, checking his watch, and together they walk back to the music room to retrieve Lukas’ violin and bow. There’s a piano on the stage on wheels so it can just be rolled back and forth between backstage and in view as needed, so Berwald doesn’t bring anything, not even sheet music. He’s got it memorised. Lukas always uses paper when performing for serious events, even if he knows it by heart, because if he ever blanks on the next section then at least he’s got a back up plan.

Mathias helps them set up the music stand, which had been dragged away for a dance group, and tells the audience about the piece they’ll be playing, intermittently saying stupid things that most of the people in the room appear to think is funny.

“Ladies and gentlemen, Salut d’Amour, Op. 12 by Elgar, performed by Berwald Oxenstierna and Lukas Bondevik," Mathias says, comically slurring the French words together so it sounds vaguely foreign, although not at all what French is supposed to sound like.

Their piece goes off without a hitch, but Lukas can’t help but keep flitting his glaze from the sheet music, which he really doesn’t need for such a short piece, to Mathias’ position at the side of the stage, sitting casually on a tall stool with a neutral pleased expression on his face. “Hi love” is the translation of the song they’re singing, and although the thought of saying something so profound, so _vulnerable_ to Mathias might make him pass out if he wasn’t on stage performing, he can’t help but associate the soft, romantic tone of the piece with a little something extra that he didn’t while he was practicing it alone in the Oxenstierna guest room, which recently has become his own.

People clap at the end, like they do for all the other performances, and Mathias’ energy never seems to fade as he says into the microphone, “Well, I think I speak for all of us when I say that Salut d’Amour is certainly going on my list of favourites. The next one up is-“

They don’t hear who is going to be next because they leave the stage and there are a group of students about to go on who are doing some sort of pep cheer, which drowns out any other sounds in the vicinity.

“Nice job,” Berwald offers.

“You too,” he says.

“Do you wanna head home?” Berwald asks, looking at his watch.

He shakes his head. “I already have I ride.”

“Are you going to be home or are you staying over?”

“I dunno,” Lukas replies with a shrug. “I’ll call you.”

 

 

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The show ends up taking a lot longer than Lukas could have forecasted, which means he decides to fall asleep in a currently unused classroom on one of the lab tables. He sheds his dress shoes and socks, which are rather uncomfortable, and lets his bare feet breathe the cold air of the basement classroom.

“I thought I’d find you somewhere doing something unsocial,” Mathias jokes, flipping on the dim lights.

Lukas blinks and sits up. “I was tired.”

“I had a drink after the show, so I’m good now,” Mathias says with a carefree grin. “You’re not still tired are you?”

“Good, because we’re going to Elina’s party,” Mathias tells him, scooping him up into his arms and stumbling out of the mostly dark classroom. Lukas’ feet get banged painfully into the side of the doorway, and he yanks lightly on the tie. “Oh, right, I didn’t get to kiss you earlier,” he says, pushing Lukas against the wall with his legs clamping around his waist and pressing their lips together. Lukas likes the vicious feel of Mathias’ dry lips smacking up against his own, and he teases the idiot’s mouth open with a bit of tongue and in only a few moments they’re frenching against a wall of their school. Mathias smells a little like beer, but it’s not overpowering enough to be gross, and Lukas is too desperate to care much.

“Jesus, Luka, what do you want me to do, you right here?” he asks teasingly, and yes, Lukas wants him to shove him against the wall and get Mathias’ pretty suit all wrinkled as they tumble around in a dark basement hallway, but apparently going by the tone of Mathias’ voice that’s not an option.

Instead, he wants to drag him to a party. He puts up with a lot of stupid stuff from him, he notes as they head out to Elina’s car, since she is driving them and a few others to her place.

 

 

 

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The party is a bit out of hand in less then an hour, which is certainly a record for any that Lukas has attended, and someone convinces him to drink something that looks like punch but smells decidedly like alcohol, and thirty minutes later he is tipsy. Lukas hates being tipsy because he always says things he regrets, but secretly likes it because it gives him the gall to say things he’d never say otherwise.

He and Mathias leave the party together like they planned, and they walk home (bad plan for tipsy people), Lukas ends up practically clinging to Mathias to avoid tripping on the normally very easy to walk over cobblestones. It’s going to be very embarrassing in the morning, but at the moment it seems like a great plan, and they crash together on Mathias’ bed after hurriedly stripping off their formal wear. Lukas pulls one of Mathias’ tee shirts on (god he really is too drunk to do anything but sleep), and Lukas allows Mathias to hold him around the waist.

When they wake up in the morning with only slight hangovers, they head down to make breakfast but find that Anna is already there.

“I thought you had work today,” Mathias says, yawning as he opens the refrigerator.

“You two came home pretty late last night,” she says, voice dangerously approaching the “worried mother” territory.

“We lost track of time, it won’t happen again,” Mathias promises hastily, which seems to satisfy her, and she starts pouring herself another cup of coffee.

“I checked on you before you woke up, and you were in the funniest position!” she says, laughing nervously. “All that space on a double bed, too, you’d think that you were little kids or something.”

“Mor,” Mathias begins, using the Danish word, which means that he’s serious enough to not be joking (as serious as he gets), and he sits casually at the table with an easygoing smile on his face. “Lukas er min kæreste.”

Lukas doesn’t speak a shred of Danish other than terms of endearment and curse words, oddly enough, but he understands the gravity of the sentence.

Anna freezes, the coffee cup halfway to her lips. She drops it back onto the table like someone just hit her in the face with the realisation.

“Oh,” she says, voice thick with emotion (it sounds like mostly fear). “I guess I should have noticed that earlier.” Lukas bites his lip uncomfortably.

“I’m fine with it,” she says, but she doesn’t sound fine. “A woman at my church group is lesbian,” she says, but with the distinct impression of someone who believed that this sort of thing happened to _other_ people, that this wouldn’t happen to her.

“Well, erm, I’m going to go to work. Be safe,” she adds hastily, and Lukas has never seen someone rush out of a room so fast.

“Do you want to go out to the rocks? It’s a warm day, and I’ve finished studying for most of my exams,” Mathias suggests casually, and Lukas is a little surprised that he’s not more down about Anna’s reaction, or about the gravity of the fact that he just sort of came out to his mom.

Honestly, Lukas is surprised that she didn’t already know. It seemed pretty obvious to him, and Brita has known since forever ago. Anna will come around, he knows, because she’s not a selfish woman and even if it makes her a bit uncomfortable she’s going to do what’s best for her childrens’ happiness and well-being.

But Mathias is right, and it sounds like a decent idea. Lukas has all 6s except for one 5+ in English, and he knows for a fact that Mathias also has all 6s except for a 5 in practical maths. “Fine,” he agrees. “But you have to quiz me on English grammar while we’re there.”

“I’ve heard the English final with Fru Olsen is pretty easy. She mostly cares about the oral part, which you’re pretty good at,” Mathias says with a shrug as they run upstairs to change into their swimsuits. “How do you think practical maths is going to be?”

Lukas shrugs. “I dunno. Ask Berwald if you need help, I’m more of a science person.”

“Do you want me to call Ber and ask if he wants to come?” Mathias inquires.

“Ah, fy fæn, I was supposed to call him,” Lukas exclaims, grabbing for the phone.

“I’m sure he’s figured out you’re not coming home by now,” Mathias laughs.

Lukas throws him a dirty look, and picks up the phone. He dials the Oxenstierna landline, since none of them have mobile phones, including Berwald. “Hello, this is Noah Oxenstierna.” Of course it had to be Herr Oxenstierna who answered.

“Hi, Noah, is Berwald there?” he asks carefully.

“Lukas!” Noah exclaims. “Are you okay? Do you need one of us to pick you up?”

“No, I have a volunteer project for most of the day. We’re cleaning up the shore. I’m sorry I forgot to call.”

“Be more careful next time,” Noah chides him, and Lukas, while annoyed at being treated like a child, is fully aware that without them he would have no place to stay, so he swallows his pride and agrees wholeheartedly.

“What time does the volunteer thing end?” Noah asks.

“5 p.m. The club leaders are taking us out to lunch,” he tells him.

“All right. Make sure you wear shoes, you don’t want to step on broken glass or a sharp rock. Bye,” Noah says, and Lukas hangs up.

“I thought you were above lying, Luka,” Mathias teases.

“Not at all,” he answers. “And I didn’t lie about where I was going to be. Let’s go, have you got your backpack?”

“As always,” he replies, slinging the straps on his shoulders. They step out onto the porch to lock the door behind them, and the weather is beautiful. Just finally warm enough for swimming, and a light breeze that rustles the trees of the overgrown mulberry tree in the front lawn.


	8. Chapter 8

The first year of Videregående skole is a week away and they’ve received their time tables for the next school year. They don’t start picking the specialised lines of studies until VG2, next year, so for now Mathias, Berwald, and Lukas have a fair amount of classes together.

“Are you both taking German?” Mathias asks, and they all nod. There are only two upper secondary schools that are close enough to their houses to really be considered, and all three of them got into the better one. The school they’ll be attending in less than a week has three foreign languages offered besides English: German, French, and Spanish, so it’s an obvious choice.

They lay their papers side by side, and Lukas discovers that he’ll have English, Science, and Physical Education with Mathias, and Maths 1T and geography with Berwald. All three of them will have the same German Level I class.

Lukas is counting the days until his eighteenth birthday, because then he’ll be able to rent a room somewhere in Larvik rather than rely on the Oxenstierna family for everything. He feels a terrible burden, and just last week he heard Berwald’s mother asking Noah when he was going to finally get out of here. He has been saving up money from working at the bakery, which he’s been doing for years, and he was a part-time life lifeguard for the last few weeks of the summer, which paid surprisingly well (plus all he had to do was get sunburned and tell kids to stop running).

Lukas flips his paper, which has his name printed in large letters at the top, to the back, where it lists all of the students in his homeroom.

“Is Tino’s surname Väinämöinen?” Lukas asks carefully, running his finger down the column of names and stopping short when he sees that one.

Berwald notably freezes, and Mathias crowds up next to him to read the list of names. “Woah, I guess he’s coming back! I haven’t talked to him in like two years!”

“We should call him, do you think we can find his number somewhere?” Lukas asks.

“I think I might have it. He has a mobile phone,” Berwald mutters, and excuses himself from the table to go root around in the three-ring binder by the landline affixed to the wall, where his family keeps all of their important phone numbers.

Mathias dials the number and it rings only once or twice before someone picks it up. “Hey, is this Tino?” he asks enthusiastically, while Berwald looks on with badly disguised interest.

“Sorry, who is this?” The voice on the other end asks in English. He sounds very different from how it did a year ago, like he finally hit puberty or something.

“It’s Mathias, from Larvik. Jesus, you sound so different! So, Luka’s timetables for the next year says that he’s in a homeroom class with a Tino Väinämöinen, would this happen to be you?” Mathias can keep up in English just fine, so he decides to do so for his convenience.

Tino laughs politely. “It is indeed,” he says a bit formally, nothing like the silly giggles and nervous smiles of the boy they knew two years ago. “I’m actually on my flight back right now. I think we’re approaching the Oslo airport in about an hour.”

“Wow!” Mathias exclaims. “Do you need help moving back into your house?”

“We have a new house now, it’s closer to the centre of the city,” Tino says, and all of them can hear the faint English accent that he’s developed.

“Oh. Well, do you want to meet up with us after you get all settled in?”

“If all parties are amenable,” Tino replies. “Although my mother wants me to talk to some of my teachers before school starts regarding adjustments between the English and Norwegian school system.”

Lukas detects a twinge of arrogance in Tino’s voice. Out of character, but he'll have to wait until they're face to face to make a more accurate judgement.

“Welcome back, Tino,” Berwald says into the receiver, cheeks tinged pink.

“Oh, hello, Berwald. I’m going to enjoy reconnecting with all of you. England may be nice but it hasn’t got you all there,” he says, and there’s the old Tino they know, because they can almost hear his smile through the receiver.

They hang up a few seconds later, after they’ve exchanged a few more pleasantries but Lukas and Mathias look at each other and unanimously decide that Tino coming back will be a good thing for them. Specifically Berwald. He needs to get out more.

“Why do you think he’s coming back?” Mathias asks curiously, mood clearly lifted.

“I’m sure his parents’ divorce has something to do with it,” Berwald offers, and Lukas shrugs in agreement, rolling his eyes at the beet-coloured blush covering the Swede’s face.

“Wipe the fog off your glasses, Ber. Just because he’s coming back doesn’t mean you’re going to put a ring on his finger in the first year or so,” Lukas reminds chidingly. “He’s probably made a lot of friends in London.”

“You’re being a little harsh, Luka, I’m sure Berwald’s just happy to see Tino come back,” Mathias says tentatively.

“Fine,” Lukas replies uncaringly. “But I’m just telling you to be realistic. That’s all,” he adds, leaning back into his chair.

“Kjeft, Lukas,” Berwald says, face darkening.

“Don’t tell me to shut up,” Lukas snaps back, face devoid of anything except perhaps vague annoyance. “I’m just telling you not to expect anything from him.”

 

 

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School starts, and it’s hot. August 16, the sun is bold and painfully bright in the sky. Lukas and Mathias bike to school, since it’s only 5 kilometres on an entirely flat, well-maintained sidewalk. Berwald takes the bus, since it’s faster, but they arrive at school around the same time.

While they lock their bicycles and pack away their helmets, Mathias chatters, idle, about the classes they’ll have this year and rumours he’s heard of their teachers.

“Hello!” Tino says from the sidewalk, still in English. They wonder if he’s going to realise that at some point he is going to have to communicate in Norwegian, since he is at a school in Norway. He’s holding a bicycle, rolling it over to the racks, but he’s wearing clothes that look expensive and his messenger bag-style backpack is real leather, distressed and everything.

“Hi!” Mathias exclaims. “How was London?”

“Wonderful,” he replies amenably. “I got my timetable a few days ago, I think we have a few classes together. And Lukas, we’ll be in the same homeroom.”

Lukas nods. “What’s your foreign language?”

“French,” he answers. “The boarding school I attended required it, so I’m sure Level I _here_ shouldn’t be too difficult,” he says with a laugh that is clearly meant to be friendly, but comes off across as cold and superior. If Tino notices the way Mathias and Lukas shift uncomfortably, he doesn’t let on. That’s unlike him- he’s hypersensitive to the feelings of the people around him, always adjusting his disposition to fit their needs. He doesn’t just not notice such blatant discomfort. Later, Lukas will reflect that a messy divorce with both parents trying to drag him back to their respective home countries, can do that to a person, but at the time he just feels annoyed.

“Well, see you around,” Tino says, waving and turning away from them to walk to his first class of the day.

“Jesus, you’d think he went to Eton or something,” Mathias remarks, returning to Norwegian. “Someone needs to take him down a peg.”

“I’m sure it’ll come with time,” Lukas says vaguely. “Let’s go to class.”

“We have science first, right? With Fru Ulvestad?” Mathias asks, fumbling around for his timetable sheet.

“Yeah, I think it’s on the first floor,” Lukas replies, and they break into a light jog since they probably should have left a little earlier if they wanted to be perfectly on time.

“Welcome class,” Fru Ulvestad is saying just as they enter the classroom. The tables are set up in pods of four seats at each, which unfortunately means that they’ll be seated next to each other, at least for today. “We’re going to start of this year with reviewing scientific method, basic lab techniques, and graphing and analysing data. You should have learned this in your lower secondary school, but we like to start off with a review since there are going to be a lot of changes for you this year,” she says with a friendly smile.

All in all, the first half of their day goes off without a hitch. All of their teachers seem decent, although the one for Maths 1T seems to have a few screws loose. Nevertheless, Lukas joins Berwald and Mathias for lunch in the courtyard, which isn’t actually a courtyard so much as an area of grass behind the school where someone has haphazardly placed a few picnic tables.

“What’s your favourite class so far?” Mathias is asking them as they unwrap their packed lunches, when a loud sound from the other end of the courtyard makes them all jump.

“Why don’t you just go back to where you came from!” Mathias is the first to leap to his feet, and he sprints a few metres over to the far end of the courtyard. It’s one of the boys that Lukas worked on a violin piece with, in Elina’s introduction group. Jonatan. He’s picked Tino up by the collars of his shirt, and while Tino has grown some, he’s dwarfed by his attacker, who is probably taller than Berwald, and with shoulders the size of tanks.

Before Lukas and Berwald have even fully realised what is happening, Mathias has grabbed Jonatan in a chokehold and yanked hard. Tino struggles free, ducks away from a punch, and kicks the guy in the stomach with a surprising amount of force. Even Mathias feels a bit of the kick, and he drops the guy on the ground.

Jonatan is wheezing and clawing at his own throat.

“Is he okay?” one of the girls asks tentatively.

“What is going on here?” their science teacher Fru Ulvestad screams, bursting from the doors with an angry growl on her face and a clipboard in her hands.

“Jonatan grabbed Tino and was trying to punch him. Mathias pulled Jonatan off of him,” Elina informs her squarely.

“Is that what happened?” she asks the rest of the students collected around the scene.

There are a few choruses of agreement, and some resounding nods, since Jonatan is still trying to catch his breath and is unable to comment. History is always written by the victors. “Jon, come with me to the nurse. This kind of thing is not acceptable here,” she says seriously.

“Why did he attack Tino? Was there any provoking?”

“Tino’s a foreigner,” Elina says, and Tino scowls with barely contained fury at the word. “And Jonatan was taking his presence in the school personally.”

“He’s like a xenophobe or something,” someone else adds, and everyone looks belatedly disgusted, as if a lot of them hadn’t been egging on the fight just a few minutes earlier.

“It’s not fair to think that you’re better than someone else because of something so trivial as ethnicity or language,” someone says, which seems to resonate with everyone, including the teacher.

Fru Ulvestad looks across the faces of the two-dozen students that swarmed around the epicentre of the issue, and seems to see that they’re all in agreement about the issue. “Come on Jonatan. We’re going to call your parents and let them know what happened,” she says, and leads him away with one hand firmly steering him into the building by the shoulder.

“Do you want to sit with us?” Berwald asks Tino hopefully.

“I could have handled that, Mathias,” Tino says with a twinge of feeling as though he’s being treated as much weaker than he actually is, ignoring Berwald’s question but following them back to their table anyway.

“Sorry,” he replies, not remotely apologetic, with a carefree expression on his face. He claps Tino on the back and laughs. “Don’t worry, I know you can hold your own just fine.”

“He’s just a rash idiot,” Lukas says wisely, and Mathias affectionately wraps an arm around his shoulder and squeezes. Tino makes eye contact with Berwald and raises his eyebrows, as if to say, “Are they together now?” Berwald shrugs in response, because there was honestly no way to tell with Lukas involved.

Gradually, over the course of their long lunch break, Tino seems to warm back up to them, laughing at Mathias’ stupid jokes and inching closer to Berwald in his seat, who looks especially pleased. Tino is taller, he looks older, and he’s certainly more forward- there’s no way he would have kicked someone in the stomach so viciously a few years ago.

“What do you think you’ll do for your program classes in VG2 and VG3?” Tino asks. “I haven’t decided yet.”

“Jurisprudence,” Mathias says.

“Chemistry,” Lukas answers.

“Mathematics for science,” Berwald says.

Tino laughs nervously. “Well, you all certainly have it all figured out! I probably can’t take a Norwegian based one; maybe I’ll do psychology. That might be fun.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard good things about that program. The pysch teacher is some crazy old lady, but some people think she’s funny,” Mathias says with a shrug. “Hey, Tino, why did you come back?”

He blinks. “My parents wanted me to be away while they were divorcing.”

“Hey, my parents divorced too!” Mathias replies enthusiastically, childishly, almost like they are bonding over a shared favourite sport team or activity.

Tino laughs, a bit bitterly. “I guess the universe aligned just the right way.”

“Are you okay, Tino?” Lukas asks slowly, and Mathias pinches himself because Lukas very rarely asks about the welfare of his peers.

Tino bites his lip. “I’ve been rude. I’m sorry. I’ll get adjusted, I’ll get better,” he replies, and they get the feeling he’s speaking more to himself than to anyone else.

“Hey, no worries dude, divorces aren’t any fun,” Mathias says, rather optimistically patting him on the shoulder.

A silence follows, and then a teacher comes to inform them that it’s time to go to their classes, which for Lukas, Mathias, and Berwald is German, and for Tino is French.

“See ya, Tino,” Berwald says gruffly.

“Bye!” he says, waving with a friendly smile as he scuttles away to class.


	9. Chapter 9

Their second year in VG is marked by confusion and adjustment, because suddenly Lukas does not have classes with the people he has had classes with since he was in lower school. With his two programs marked as chemistry and music, his schedule is hectic and packed with orchestral practice, complicated labs, and basic courses that he is still required to take, like English and Norwegian and German. Their workloads all increase exponentially, and it’s unfortunately not a logistic function because there’s no sign of it bottoming out any time soon.

“Can you help me with this, Tino?” Berwald asks, and Lukas and Mathias roll their eyes at each other- he's asking for help on maths of all things, which if anything is his best subject.

“Sure!” he replies brightly.

“Hey, Luka, can you help me with this Danish conjugation set? I’m having a lot of trouble understanding this.” Mathias asks in mock-seriousness, and Lukas laughs because it’s actually a decent joke.

“Yeah, Mathias, can you help me learn how to play the violin?” he replies.

Tino narrows his eyes at him. “That’s not very funny. He’s just asking for help.”

“In a subject he tutors people in,” Lukas points out easily, leaning back on the chair and crossing his legs.

“Lukas is better than Tino at maths anyway, Tino’s program is in social studies like me,” Mathias adds helpfully, clearly unaware of how far he and Lukas are testing Berwald’s nerves. He’s practically seething in his seat, and his perpetually terrifying expression darkens farther still.

Still, Lukas isn’t afraid to push the boundaries. “He isn’t even theoretical maths, he’s taking practical.”

“Give it a rest, you two,” Tino says, clearly irked but putting on a small polite smile. “He’s just trying to be nice.”

“Nice,” Lukas drawls mockingly, and Berwald feels pushed into a corner by their antics. If he doesn’t react, he’s acting like a pushover, but if he makes a scene he’s risking the afternoon. Berwald is a man of his word and his reputation, so although he does not want to, he gets to his feet.

“Did you hear anyone being nice? I didn’t hear-“ Mathias trails off because Berwald reaches across the table and pulls him to his feet by his shoulders, staring him intently in the eyes.

“What, are you gonna hit him?” Lukas asks boredly as if the situation isn’t even worth his attention, unconsciously egging him on.

“Maybe,” Berwald says, keeping a firm hold on Mathias, who grins at him like the carefree idiot that he is. That seems to be the final act, and Berwald takes a swing at him.

“Well, this is exciting,” Lukas says blandly, getting up from his seat to refill his juice glass.

“Berwald, calm down!” Tino exclaims urgently, the picture perfect archetype of the worried significant other trying to diffuse the situation with soft words and peace keeping. Unfortunately, the issue regresses even farther because when Lukas walks around the table back to his seat, Berwald makes a sudden motion and he drops his glass on the ground.

It shatters.

Shit, he is not about to have a flashback in Mathias’ living room.

Except he is, and it’s stupid because the glass hasn’t even hit him (he’s not even bleeding), but then he sees the red tablecloth and it is all downhill from there. Lukas visibly blanches, and he stares at the broken glass for one second, and he remembers. He remembers the warm summer afternoon. His father shoved him into a cabinet, the panes of glass broke behind him. Then came the bottle. Shatter, shatter, shatter, blood everywhere, and Lukas knows he can do one of two things: fall onto the ground and cover his eyes, or he can run.

He chooses the latter, ignoring Tino’s confusion and Mathias’ concern, and sprints. It's a bit cowardly, but better than having a breakdown right here right now. He briefly contemplates running to an interior room, but settles on going outside. He takes great heaving breaths, not just from the exertion, and slows his pace so passerby don’t look so suspicious. Lukas immediately spots a metro bus being boarded across the street, and it seems like a sign from God, so he boards it.

No idea where it’s going, he doesn’t really care, because he has put a lot of effort (some would say too much) into avoiding even very brief moments of vulnerability. He presses himself against the window, crossing one leg over the other, and allows himself to breathe. It is so much easier to do so when he is alone.

 

 

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He eventually figures out that the bus is heading for Sandefjord, which is actually only 20 kilometres or so, so he gets off at an early stop not too far out of Larvik and starts walking. Back to his house. Not to Berwald’s house, but his father’s home, where he knows his father will not be home. Not on a Thursday night, Thursdays, Tuesdays, and Fridays are gambling nights.

Lukas fishes the key out from the crack in the cement of the porch and entres. All of the lights are off, but otherwise it’s in decent condition. He mindlessly climbs the stairs, back to his old room like he did a thousand times before. Oddly enough it has been preserved exactly as he left it several years ago. The textbook he notably forgot and had to pay for because he was too afraid to go back for is still laying open on his bed; everything covered with a thick layer of dust. It’s like being fifteen again and it’s more than a bit unnerving.

Lukas throws open the closet doors- the clothes that he didn’t take with him are even still in here, obviously too small for him now, in the hanging closet organisers. He is thoroughly engaged with his pathetic reminisce when he hears the door open. Frantically, Lukas grabs for a weapon, and settles on an empty vase, which he clutches in between his hands as he slowly descends the stairs, as quietly as he can. His father shouldn’t be home already, he can’t be.

“Luka?” The nickname melts the building fear, leaving him merely a bit annoyed and feeling a little foolish.

“You idiot,” he answers, forcing his voice to remain even despite relatively ragged breathing. “How did you know I would come here?” he asks as they meet in the foyer. Lukas pokes Mathias gently in the chest with each word to make his point.

Mathias smiles. “You know better than to ask me that. I’ve known you since we were both seven. Enjoying a creepy tour down memory lane?”

“I wouldn’t say ‘enjoy’,” Lukas replies, trailing his fingers along the countertop as they enter the kitchen.

“It looks nearly the same,” Mathias remarks uneasily, shifting his weight back and forth like there was a question he wanted to ask but hadn’t yet mustered the nerve to do so.

Lukas throws open the doors of the refrigerator, and nearly vomits on the spot. Rotten food spoils and festers in the dark plastic shelves.

“Jesus, he hasn’t been here in a long time,” Mathias comments, pinching his nose as Lukas slams the doors shut and scampers to the other side of the kitchen.

“Who’s paying the bills then? Someone would have repossessed the house,” Lukas says, voice comically altered as he holds his nose between his fingers.

“Where do you think he is?” Mathias inquires without answering Lukas’ question, leaning against the sidewall of the living room, where they spent more than a few afternoons.

“What’s the gambling capital of the world again?”

“Macau, Las Vegas?” he suggests.

"Probably Macau," Lukas jokes. "He always did love an exotic getaway."

A draft rolls through the room, and abruptly Lukas realises how eerie this is. In his abuser’s lair, except it’s no longer a haven for cigar smoke and strange men and broken glass, and his abuser isn’t here anymore. He never associated this place with anything but negative feelings- fear, pain, crying on the floor at 1:00 in the morning, and all of the external causes of negativity have been removed (except for the god-awful refrigerator), leaving just an empty shell. A carcass of the place it used to be, he barely recognises the smooth pale yellow walls and stained black furniture without his father standing among it all, a man cheerfully watching the world he wants to destroy burn.

“Why don’t you go home, Mathias?” Lukas asks abruptly.

“And leave you here to look for your blood on the walls and sort through your childhood things? I don’t fucking think so! What if your father comes home?” Mathias exclaims rashly, passionately.

“Your _concern_ is so touching, I’m floored,” Lukas says.

“You’re not going to bully me out this time,” he replies in a sing-song voice.

Lukas raises an eyebrow appraisingly in response.

“C’mon. You need a friend right now, I can tell.”

“Then you had better leave,” Lukas grits out.

Mathias grins and chuckles, unfazed. “I guess it’s my turn to laugh, because that’s the stupidest thing I’ve heard all day. I’m staying here, you can’t make me go.”

“But I can go,” Lukas points out.

“I guess that’s okay. As long as it’s somewhere safe,” Mathias replies slowly, considering.

“You guess? As if you’re in charge of my whereabouts?” Lukas snaps, annoyed at having his abilities, his judgement and intuition questioned and thrown out of the way, almost like he is a small child and not capable of making decisions for himself.

“Wait- I said that wrong-“

“You sure did,” Lukas retorts. “So I suggest you make some edits or I’m walking out of the front door and heading to some dark corner of Larvik where you could only dream of finding me.”

“I’m worried about you. I’m not trying to control you; I just don’t think you should be alone right now. If you’re sure you don’t want company, I guess I can leave,” Mathias amends. He’s toeing in completely unfamiliar territory- everything he says is unfiltered and brash and usually a little bossy, but he has to make sure he doesn’t screw this up irredeemably any more than he already has.

“Fine. Better,” Lukas agrees amenably, and turns his back to fumble with the dusty CD player. “We could use some music. Do you want classical or alternative?”

“Alternative,” Mathias answers.

“Classical it is,” he replies, and clicks the lid closed with a disk (all he can make out is the composer, Grieg, the title has been smudged off). The music skips a beat, then goes fuzzy, and for a moment it seems like the player is going to spit the disc out in disgust, but then it goes. Violin Sonata No.2 in G Major, Op. 13, it’s one of Lukas’ personal favourites.

He’s lost in the music when Mathias ensnares his right hand with his left, and rests his other hand on his shoulder blade.

“This isn’t dancing music,” Lukas protests, but he’s already being dipped against his will on a particularly dramatic note while Mathias cackles.

“What type of music is it then?”

“A sonata,” he answers. “For violin. His teacher said it was too Norwegian,” Lukas recalls fondly, remembering learning about this in class.

“Nothing could be too Norwegian for Grieg,” Mathias agrees wholeheartedly. “It was in his blood.” The piece is relatively short, and when the player clicks off and beeps angrily its completeness, Lukas decides to locate something more befitting of a proper dance. “Do you know the waltz?” he asks, as he pulls away to flip through his binder of burned recordings of classical music.

“Of course,” he replies, puffing out his chest a little. “I’m cultured.”

“Who composed Engima Variations?” he replies blandly as he inserts the disc.

“Mahler,” he replies brashly, and Lukas winces at his confidence.

“It’s Elgar.”

“Same difference. They’re both English.”

“Mahler was Czech.”

The music kicks in just as Mathias is opening his mouth, no doubt with some stupid retort that showcased his lack of knowledge regarding the arts. Lukas and Mathias dance in the living room because why not. Mathias is actually good at leading, and for once in his life Lukas isn’t opposed to following, and their quick Viennese waltz with ¾ time, turning around each other clockwise with their stance especially close for a closed position, and faint pink tinting both of their cheeks.

When they’re at Mathias’ house home alone a few hours later sitting on opposite ends of the couch in silence, Lukas will finally say what he’s been sitting on for a few weeks now.

“I’m going to move out of Berwald’s house.”

Mathias barely looks away from the television. “That’s not a problem, we have a guest room.”

Lukas laughs. “I’m not moving in with you, idiot. I’m renting an apartment,” he says. It’s a little one-room basement flat with electricity, running water, and a working stove. Not too far from the bakery or school, and the landlord is sketchy enough to accept pay under the table and rent an apartment to a seventeen-year-old despite the age of majority being eighteen.

Surprisingly, Mathias doesn’t act all surprised or concerned or shocked. “Good for you. Got enough cash saved up?”

“Plenty. I also got promoted,” he says, which is little better than a euphemism for he has to work more frequently and for longer periods of time.

“What did you get on that English test?” Mathias asks casually as he flips through his notebooks, somehow ignoring the buzzing dialogue emitted from the television as he writes his name at the top of a paper.

“What’d you get on that science test?” Lukas snaps back, because he got a 2 on that English assessment, and that’s not acceptable if he wants to get out of Larvik and go to a good university.

“I got a 3-,” Mathias answers shamelessly, and Lukas is annoyed that he could never admit something similarly.

“I did better than you,” Lukas lies.

“I’m sure you did,” he replies, rolling his eyes. “You’re terrible at English.”

“That’s not true!”

“If you want me to help you, my door is always open. Because I got a 6.”

Lukas snorts. “Well, good for you.”

“Good for me indeed,” he replies cockily, scooting across the couch to rest his head on Lukas’ lap, who delivers a well-deserved smack in response.


	10. Chapter 10

The weeks leading up to final examinations in VG2 is a hectic one, but in physical education there is never an exam, and so their teacher Herr Swenhaugen, more commonly referred to as Haug by the student population, takes them on a hiking field trip during their six hour exam block.

It’s mid-June and an unusually hot day, so Lukas has packed two water bottles in his backpack. Most of the windows do not stay closed in the beat-up school bus, and the wind smacks their hair around as the sweat makes their legs stick to the seats.

“It’s a beautiful day,” Tino remarks pleasantly, looking outside of the window.

“For god’s sake it’s nearly 30 degrees,” Mathias exclaims, unpleasantly.

“You’re exaggerating,” Lukas replies easily, although it isn’t as much of one as it should be considering it is only June. He runs a hand through the hair on the back of his head. It’s already a little damp with sweat, and they haven’t even done anything yet except lace up thiking boots and tie bandanas around the crowns of their skulls.

“Too bad we couldn’t do this in the winter. We could have gone skiing,” Tino says wistfully, taking a glug of his water bottle. Lukas shakes his head so quickly that Tino leans forward in his seat to squint at him properly. “Can’t you ski?”

“No. Never been,” Lukas replies, leaning across the isle between the seats so he can hear the response. The wind smacking everything around, vivacious laughter, and loudmouths make for one hell of an ambience.

“What? Really?” Tino exclaims excitedly, eyes already a thousand kilometres away to warm drinks by the hearth and snow boots and challenging each other down the highest, most difficult slopes. “We should go when it gets cold again. Can you guys ski?”

“’Course,” Berwald replies.

“Obviously,” Mathias says. “Lukas is the one that’s weird.”

“Since when were you normal?” Berwald mumbles in response, ducking and laughing to avoid the smack that Mathias attempts, getting up and leaning over Lukas to reach.

“Mats! Stay in your seat!” Haug barks.

“Apologies, Haug!” Mathias shouts from the back of the bus with a stupid grin on his face. Just as Haug is about to tell him off, they pull into the dusty parking lot of a nearby gas station.

“It’s only a half-mile to the trailhead. We’ll be able to fill up our water bottles there.”

“It’s so hot,” Tino groans, fanning himself with a binder as the bus brakes hiss angrily as the vehicle screeches to a halt. “Does anyone have gum?”

“I think I have some in my wallet, if you can find it you can take some,” Mathias replies casually, stopping for a second as they walk through the parking lot to dig the rectangular black wallet from his sling backpack. He’s always so casual with his possessions, Lukas is thinking chidingly, when he remembers the photograph that Mathias stuck in one of the clear folders within it. If Tino opens it he’ll surely see it, and Lukas has a high preference for that picture not existing, but if he can’t have that then he’ll settle for no one seeing it. So he snatches it out of the air, locates the gum, and tosses the package to Tino, who tilts his head in confusion. Mathias’ brow wrinkles too, but them smoothes over as he understands. He may be annoying, but he’s not going to risk silent treatment for a few weeks by revealing the photograph.

“What’s wrong?” Tino asks.

“Ooh, what’s in the wallet?” a boy named Lars asks obnoxiously, inching his way between Lukas and Mathias with what hindsight will later declare a mischievous smile.

“A few stolen library cards,” Mathias jokes light-heartedly, but before he can return it to his bag, Lars snatches it out of his hand and flips it open.

He turns back and bats Lukas’ hands away. The plastic cover is in the back of the wallet, so he straightens his fingers and strikes Lars in the back of the neck with the edge of his hand with as much force as he can muster.

Lars yelps in pain, just enough distraction to snatch it back, ears burning in embarrassment.

“Bondevik! What the hell was that?!” Haug exclaims from the back of the group, and he jogs up to the epicentre of the situation. The unholy sunlight reflecting off of his sunglasses makes it impossible to look him in the eyes.

“You’re carrying the first aid kit for the rest of the hike. I don’t tolerate physical violence, even if we’re out of the classroom,” he tells him gruffly, dropping the heavy metal kit at his feet and returning to his place at the back of the line.

“Aw, that sucks,” Tino says sympathetically. “I can carry it if you want me too.”

“Of course not,” Lukas says decidedly, unzipping his bag and looking for a place among the swimsuit and towel and waterbottles.

“Shouldn’t have hit him,” Berwald remarks neutrally, ever the pacifist.

Lukas doesn’t reply _But much better than the alternative_ , even though that’s what he’s thinking. Too vulnerable and open to interpretation.

While he knows that Berwald and Tino are obviously at least somewhat aware of the nature of their relationship, Lukas has made a point of not verbally confirming it. He’s not sure why- it’s rather clear to people who know them well- but it is just one more line that he is not prepared to cross. Well, more accurately, afraid of.

“It’s the trailhead,” Mathias notes as he rushes to the front of the line to fill up their water bottles at the spigot.

“Ew, this water is going to taste gross,” one of their classmates comments, and all of them wince.

“Suck it up or leave!” Haug shouts from a distance away. The rumour mill says that he served in the FSK, the selective, classified Norwegian special forces, but he won’t confirm or deny that. Obviously, for everything the FSK is and does is kept under wraps.

“Damn straight,” Mathias says pleasantly, grinning broadly, and Haug splits the group up into three quadrants to go onto the three separate trails- Blå, Lilla, and Oransje. Mathias, Lukas, Berwald, and Tino all end up pointed to the Blå trail, a moderately difficult, rocky trek down to the banks of a river. Haug has two student teachers, a polite young woman with nerves of steel and a pimply uni grad with hilarious jokes. Unfortunately, neither of them end up supervising their hike- it’s Haug, the beast himself, who gets that honour.

“Get it together, troops. It’s one hell of a day, but we’re going to make it work,” Haug shouts in his best military commander voice. Lukas adjusts the shoulder straps of his backpack and follows the double-file line of seven or eight kids into the woods. The branches are thick and spiny, but the trees, with a few notable exceptions, don’t stretch very far into the sky. Unfortunately, the rocks quickly descend upon them and Lukas is forced to crouch as he keeps his hands on various handholds as they slide down the nearly vertical escarpment.

“Apologies, the website said this was supposed to easy to medium difficulty,” Haug says, but the fact that he isn’t breaking a sweat despite the even further rising mercury, humidity, and excruciatingly difficult exercise, suggests that he isn’t very sorry at all. It probably wasn’t even an accident. The onerous first aid kit, the price of preventing his extracurricular activities with Mathias from becoming public knowledge, digs through the cheap fabric of the bag and into his spine. Lukas stands tentatively from his position on the rock and reaches out a hand to the sapling below him. Spiny plants cut into the skin around his ankles and knees (it was a truly poor decision to wear shorts).

He jumps down to the next platform, successfully too, and then he hears Tino shout in surprise. He cranes his neck behind him to look, and he sees Mathias turn to look too. Five metres up the incline, Tino catches himself on a rock and curses loudly, in Finnish, because they can both see Berwald wince.

“Voi kyrpä!” Tino mutters to himself. He hopes he’s imaging the crack he heard in his ankle.

“Need any help?” Berwald inquires.

“No, I’m fine,” he replies, forcing cheer into his voice. “Just rolled my ankle, I think it’s fine now!”

“Sure? You landed wrong,” Berwald says, and Lukas knows a ticking time bomb when he sees one. Lukas may be reluctant to express vulnerability, but he’s spent some time homeless and knows when to swallow his pride and ask someone to help him. Tino can’t do the same, and Berwald’s ingrained and very ingrained paternal intrinsic to protect from harm, shield, and safeguard. They’ll clash; Mathias and Lukas both know it.

“I’m sure,” Tino replies, voice tense. He leans down to tighten his hiking boot. The pressure will take his mind off the pain.

“Do you want me to take a look at it? Could be broken,” he notes.

“It’s fine, take my word for it,” Tino says, and he takes the next step down.

“The overlook over the river’s supposed to be pretty romantic,” Mathias teases into Lukas’ ear as he shimmies down the rocks. Mathias has sweat all over his body, legs completely scratched up and various leaves and small twigs caught in his hair and clothes.

“How far are we?” Lukas asks, loud enough for the whole group to hear.

“Less than two kilometres,” Haug shouts from the back, which as the crow flies, if they were to be just walking down the streets of Larvik, it would take them no more than a few short minutes. But here, where .1 kilometre took ten minutes, two kilometres would be akin to several lifetimes.

“All right, soldiers. Sit where you are and water up. You’re all sweating like pigs. If you’ve got any scratches, find Lukas, because he’s babysitting the first aid kit.”

Their nine-student group is scattered within a 10-metre region, all on varying levels of the escarpment. Mathias plops down too close to Lukas, wrapping an arm around his shoulder with a lopsided smile. Lukas shrugs off the backpack and opens up the first aid kit to get a bandage for the area just above his knee where a particularly bad pricker has torn across his skin. It’s spurting little bursts of blood that washes down his leg and soaked the upper cuff of his trousers.

Mathias takes the kit from him and pulls out a roll of bandages and some strips of pre-cut gauze. Then he gets up so he can look up the hill where Tino is sitting swinging his legs happily. “There’s some wrappings in here for sprains, want it?”

“No, I can’t even feel it,” he responds.

“That’s because he’s tightened his boot so much that he’s cut off circulation,” Berwald mumbles.

“You’re always treating me like a child!” Tino exclaims suddenly, and then put his hands over his mouth like he’s afraid that he’s shattered the perfect visage he’s erected- polite, non-assuming, small, and friendly. But it’s just that- a visage. He may be friendly and a bit shorter than the average male of their age, but he’s certainly not a pushover and he does not take any shit. He’s a lot stronger than he looks, and impressively enduring in the face of obstacles. But right now, the tension between Berwald’s coddling instincts and Tino’s rightful desire to be left alone sometimes is making for one very awkward situation.

“I’m sorry if-“ Berwald begins. He looks fearful. Fearful of loosing someone he thought he had a solid friendship with, a solid friendship that might eventually lead to a relationship.

“You know what, just don’t. I’m not in the mood for this conversation right now,” Tino says, rubbing the sweat from the corner of his eyes and leaning backwards against the rock with a sigh on his lips.

 

_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+

 

The river is beautiful, and almost immediately upon sighting it everyone takes off all the clothes that they are legally allowed to remove and flounder in the shallow water. The rocks are warm and the water is cold, and the scenery is lovely. Vibrant green leaves dot the stream like stars, and the sun, earlier so jarring and painful, now feels merely pleasant.

“Where do you think you’ll apply to university?” Mathias asks him.

“I’m not staying in Larvik,” Lukas says.

Mathias agrees wholeheartedly. “I think I’ll apply to-“

“Don’t say any more. I’m not going to tell you where I’ll be sending my papers so, and I expect you to do the same for me.”

“Why? Afraid of your passionate feelings for me clouding your judgement?”

“Absolutely not,” Lukas replies, trying not to let his clenched teeth affect the tone of his words.

“If you were so sure we would be filling out our applications together next year,” Mathias counters. “You li-i-i-ike me,” he adds childishly, like he is about to break into a rendition of k-i-s-s-i-n-g in a tree.

Lukas turns his head to discretely check the people who are around them- no one. Everyone is spread out across the breadth of the wide river, and there’s not a soul within several metres. With a flat sarcastic expression, he asks, “Who told you?”

“You. When you thought I was sleeping,” Mathias replies teasingly. Lukas knows exactly what he’s referring to, but it’s certainly a stretch of the truth. He hadn’t actually said anything, just kissed his forehead and let his fingers grace Mathias’ resting heartbeat. It had been a moment of weakness (he had just received a drunken voicemail from his father, who had apparently been imprisoned since he had left). Lukas had been feeling alone, and Mathias’ frequent onslaughts of affection, while annoying, were for a period of time, the only thing he really had.

“You certainly do like to make up stories that suit your fancy,” he says finally.

“I would like to go to university with you, you know,” Mathias says tentatively.

“I know.”

“So why aren’t you going to tell me what unis you like?” he prods.

Lukas sighs. “Uni’s a big life decision. I’m not going to make that decision based off of you, and you shouldn’t base yours off of me.”

“But if we do go to the same place, we can rent a place together, right?” Mathias asks, ever unperturbed.

“Don’t push it,” he replies tensely, rolling his eyes with all the exasperation of a mother watching her toddler wreak havoc on wait staff at a charming café.

“Hey, Berwald,” Mathias says. “I can’t believe Tino isn’t going to get into the water.”

“He won’t take his boot off,” he answers. “Stubborn,” he mutters under his breath, not without an undertone of bitterness.

“Do you think it’s broken?”

“Of course it’s broken,” Berwald says.

Lukas sinks lower into the water, allowing the cool water to envelop up to the middle of his neck. Frankly he is tired of Ber and Tino’s communication problems and the tipping it brings to their relatively stable friendship group, but since he doesn’t live with Berwald’s family anymore, he doesn’t care too terribly much.

“Damnit, sorry!” Elina shouts, and Lukas looks towards the shore. Tino falls backwards against the rocks, grabbing at his injured leg, because Elina has just accidentally kicked it. He crumples into a foetal position instinctively before forcing himself to straighten out and sit back up. He bludgeons himself into putting on a reasonable expression, but Haug has already taken notice.

“Väinämöinen? Can you take off your boot, now? If something’s wrong you’re going to need a splint,” Haug says.

Tino bites his lip, and Berwald gets out of the water to loom over him while he removes his boot. Lukas watches from the centre of the river, and he’s vaguely impressed by Tino’s poker face because he must be in a lot of pain. The shoe comes off and it must be bad because immediately Berwald drops to his knees and leans close to examine the injury.

The remaining kids who haven’t crowded around do so. Lukas finds a place on a rock where he can see over the numerous heads, and winces sympathetically. There aren’t any bones sticking out but the area a few centimetres up from his anklebone looks gravelly and angulated. Blood is sticking to each bit of skin in odd clots and bits.

“Holy shit, do we need to call 112?” Elina asks.

“Dissipate, everyone. Berwald’s a lifeguard and a ski patrol, he knows what he’s doing. Back away from Tino, he needs space right now,” Haug says, making a pacifying motion with his hands. Mathias and Lukas raise their eyebrows at each other, because they’re probably thinking the same thing.

“He was so stupid,” Lukas remarks casually as they flit away from the scene and out of earshot from their peers.

“I think you’re being a little harsh,” Mathias says. “If we were walking together in the city and you broke your leg, would you let me carry you to the hospital?” he snorts.

“Of course,” Lukas replies coldly, annoyed at the implication that he wouldn’t. “If I was unable to walk, I needed to go somewhere, and anyone, not just you were available, I would be unhappy but amenable.” The fact that he spent two months homeless rather than spend two months living with a family that would have happily accepted him has made him realise a few things regarding appropriate levels of vulnerability. The fact that Tino risks loss of limb or permanent damage to his leg by being stubborn is unacceptable. Simply unacceptable.

 

_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+

 

The doctor’s office puts Tino on crutches for two months, and tells him that walking on the injury has caused a half-dozen stress fissures to spread out from the epicentre.

“I don’t know how you walked on this,” the doctor tells him as he pins the x-rays on the light-up board.

Tino knows exactly why but instead he laughs politely and rubs the back of his head a bit ruefully. “I guess I just thought it was a bit of a sprain,” he lies. He knew it was broken from the very beginning. He heard the crack, and felt the cracks that spread through his foot like a burning rod slowly being drilled deeper and deeper into the flesh, the bone, the tendons.

“At least your cast is waterproof,” Mathias tells him later when they are on the rocks eating lunch. Tino’s propped his foot up on the rock beside him while he picks at the Tupperware of undercooked pasta coated in some slimy orange sauce his mother packed him.

“Modern technology certainly is a wonder,” he says genuinely, and from his peripheral vision he can see Berwald nearly roll his eyes. He knows that the world, and especially Berwald, will consider him foolish, but Tino has learned from his parents that nearly anything can be sacrificed in the name of pride, even a marriage. So certainly, a friendship can be strained. It’s only collateral.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story includes a planned 26 more chapters! It's a lot, and when I'm loosing motivation to punch out another chapter, it really helps if people leave kudos or comments or whatever they feel comfortable with. I'm not going to hold updates hostage until I get x number of reviews, because that's ridiculous and childish, but I would just like to say that even a few words (either critique or praise, both are great) can really help a writer to make the final push on finishing and posting a chapter. Much love, and thanks for reading this far!


	11. Chapter 11

Their last year of VG is marked by more work in their respective subject areas. They have nearly no classes between the four of them, and Lukas spends more and more time in long excruciating laboratory experiments, trying to isolate unknown compounds and identify cations and anions. Elina is his lab partner for most everything- she’s an excellent science student and writes up quality abstracts faster than their classmates can finish the cover page.

It’s late December and they’re all on winter break, only the day before Christmas. Lukas didn’t buy a tree, but he did purchase some clearance crepe paper, a string of white lights, and a bag of popcorn. He spends a few hours of an afternoon sitting on the cold apartment floor with a needle and thread stringing the popcorn onto fishing line.

He never cared much for decorations but this is his first official Christmas living in his flat, by himself, because last year he went back to the Oxenstierna household for the holidays, since his absence was fresh. They had been sympathetic, but this year they had forgotten about the teenager they had once given shelter to and thank goodness hadn’t insisted on his presence this December 25th.

Unfortunately for him, Lukas’ quiet holiday is interrupted when someone buzzes the door from downstairs, asking to be let in. His landlady, a woman whose name he still does not know, runs a tight ship about visitors since many of her inhabitants are hiding from the police for one reason or another. There are a lot of runaways, prostitutes, and even a few members of organised criminal organisations. That being said, he never feels afraid being here at night. There’s a nice deadbolt on the door and Fru Landlady is quick to expel anyone without a reason to be in the building.

The ancient intercom buzzes up to his apartment, and Lukas reluctantly removes the blanket from around his body. It’s freezing in the basement.

“There is a boy here to see you. What’s your name, boy?”

“Tino,” he answers, and even with the bad static and background noise of cars driving by, Lukas can hear the timid fear in his voice.

“Do you know him, zajka?” Fru asks shrewdly.

“Yes, Fru, he’s a friend from school,” he says politely.

“I will kick your ass out of here if you do anything to damage my property or my tenets,” she tells him fiercely. “Don’t expect this on a regular basis! Only because it’s Christmas!” Fru says loudly, and Lukas can hear the clattering of shoes on the basement stairs. There are four rooms in the basement. One of them is unoccupied, the one across the hall is a young mother and her children likely hiding from an abusive spouse, and diagonally a few steps away from his flat lies a narcotics addict.

A knock sounds at the solid oak door, and Lukas unlocks the door. “Tino, how did you find this apartment building?” he asks seriously, because the rent is listed under a fake name and no one, not even Mathias, has seen this place. He’s careful, only because those are Fru’s rules, and damn if he’s going to loose the only place that would ever rent a flat to someone underage and without a true legal guardian.

“It wasn’t hard to see where you were going after school. I’ve known since you got this apartment,” he answers casually. “Don’t worry, I haven’t told anyone,” he adds genuinely. Lukas supposes that if he had to trust anyone with this information, Tino would be his best bet.

“Why aren’t you with your family on Christmas Eve?” Lukas asks blandly. “Tea?” he asks, gesturing to the electric kettle that the Oxenstierna family gave him last year for his birthday.

“My parents are fighting a bit again,” he answers, as cheerily as he can, and Lukas feels a little incensed on Tino’s behalf. Mathias’ parents had divorced too, it was fairly common and Lukas certainly didn’t have any problem with the practice itself, but at least they were still amenable enough to act presentable in front of their children, and avoid getting Brita and Mathias caught up in the crossfire. Lukas knows for a fact that there hadn’t been any abuse, because Fru Väinämöinen screamed, “You may not have hit me or called me names, but I can still want a fucking divorce, you bastard!” at the top of her lungs while Lukas was eating lunch at their house, in Finnish. Berwald had translated it immediately, albeit a more censured version in what was clearly a second-nature action and not a spiteful one. Tino had understandably shot him a look that was anything but friendly.

“Sorry,” Berwald had said. “I didn’t mean to-“

“What did you get for problem six? I always forget the difference between molarity and molality.”

“Molarity is moles of solute over litres of solution, molality is moles of solute over kilograms of solution,” Lukas had answered quickly. He’s in advanced science classes, so the days of frantically trying to distinguish between similar-sounding words like entropy and enthalpy are long behind him.

“Are you okay?” Tino asks, and Lukas is unpleasantly jolted back to the present where he's standing in a dingy basement apartment with a black mould problem.

“Yeah. Fine,” he replies. “So would you like some tea?”

“Please,” Tino replies politely, sitting on one of the stools by the perpetually greasy-looking (no matter how he scrubs) formica countertop and folding his hands atop the flat surface in front of him.

“It’s Christmas Eve,” Tino remarks, looking appreciatively at the meagre decorations dotting the room. Lukas is reflectively embarrassed, and busies himself trying to find a tea that isn’t from a clearance section of some sketchy corner store. Lemon zinger, he reads from the box, and after a peak inside, he decides that will work.

“Yes,” Lukas replies. “Are you planning on staying?”

“If you don’t mind. No one should spend Christmas alone,” Tino says kindly but firmly.

“Fine by me.”

“Where do you think you’ll go to university?” The decision is drawing nearer and nearer and the both of them are pretending they aren't worried about the transition.

“I’m certainly getting out of Larvik. A big city, if I can. I wouldn’t be opposed to Sweden or Denmark. They have better unis,” he says casually. He doesn’t have any reservations about sharing his future life plans with Tino, since their respective arrangements will obviously not be affecting each other in a very significant capacity.

“What about you?”

“I’m going back to Finland, if I can,” he replies, faraway look etched on his features.

“That’s where your dad moved to, right?” Lukas asks, sliding the cup of tea across the counter to Tino, who thanks him and takes a delicate sip of the hot liquid.

“Yes, but I think I’d like to go to a bigger city. Helsinki or Tampere or Turku, maybe. He lives in Nivala.”

Lukas shrugs, and they sit in silence for only a few seconds. Tino notably hates silence, it makes him feel uncomfortable and itchy in his own skin, so he quickly asks, “Do you have any board games? I brought a deck of cards.”

“What do you want to play?” he asks blankly.

“Do you have any neighbours who could use some company?” Tino asks, already getting off the stool, which is too tall for him, and walking towards the door.

“Wait, I don’t know them-“ Lukas begins, but paying no heed, Tino exits and knocks firmly on the door right across the hall. The family that lives there is made up of a woman with scared eyes and a black cloak-garment covering all but her face, and her three children, including a small baby.

“Hello. My name is Tino, my friend in Lukas is your neighbour,” he says pleasantly as the door creaks open. Only the woman’s fingers are visible, ready to slam the door open at any second that she detects any kind of danger.

“Are you doctor?” she asks quietly.

“Pardon me, what?” Tino replies.

“You know medicine?” she clarifies, not opening the door any more than a few centimetres. “My baby hot. I have no thermometer,” she tells him. She sounds scared.

“Let me call my friend,” Tino says, referring to Berwald, because he’s a lifeguard, a regular babysitter, and a ski patrol medic. He fishes his mobile phone from his pocket and scrolls through his contacts.

“Lukas, do you have a thermometer?” Tino calls, because Lukas is lagging behind uncertainly. He doesn’t usually talk to strangers so openly.

“I use it for cooking,” he says slowly. “But I’m sure it will work.”

“Do you mind if we come in?” Tino asks.

The woman grips the door tighter, small hands turning white from the pressure. He still can’t see her face very clearly through the crack, but he can hear a baby fussing quite clearly from his position at the step.

“I do not know you. I never saw you before,” she says. “But my baby is sick.”

“My name is Tino Väinämöinen, I’m a student. My friend Lukas Bondevik lives here. I’m sorry if I am overstepping, but I would really like to help you,” he says genuinely, smiling amiably.

The woman opens the door all of the way. She’s small- barely five feet tall, and holding an even smaller baby to her chest with her arms huddled carefully around the wrap.

“Ammi!” a little girl at her feet exclaims, holding up a piece of construction paper carefully divided into small quadrants all filled with various colours of glitter glue and patterned fabric.

“Pretty, Khayrat,” the woman says a bit absently, and leads Tino and Lukas to the cramped folding plastic table positioned in the middle of the room.

“Here’s my thermometer,” Lukas says, holding it up a bit self-consciously, because it’s one meant for checking the temperature of breads and meats baking in an oven, not for checking ill children. The woman doesn’t seem to be bothered by it, and tearing the baby away from her chest, lays him/her (it’s hard to tell when they’re so little) on a clean part of the table, on a blanket.

“Nasir, Nasir,” she says tiredly, taking the thermometre from the little boy’s mouth.

Tino looks at the number and swallows. “Take him to the doctor.”

The woman lunges towards the cramped doorway, yanking her thick woollen cloak off of its hook. She covers herself with it and snatches a blanket off her sofa to wrap Nasir.

“Khayrat! Amal! Get your coats on! We are taking a trip!”

“But I need to finish this level!” presumably Amal yells from the only bedroom in the apartment.

 

_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+

 

And so that is how Tino and Lukas end up babysitting 2-year-old twins in the basement of the only sketchy apartment building in Norway. The kids don’t celebrate Christmas, but they seem excited about it once thoroughly fascinated by the popcorn on strings in his flat or the brightly coloured crepe paper. The Christmas mix CD Tino brought with him is mostly in Finnish, but Luks recognises “O Tannenbaum” and “Baby It’s Cold Outside.” Nevertheless, it’s properly festive, just not how Lukas expected to be spending his Christmas Eve.

Fru Hafsa Darzi, as they will come to know her as, picks up her infant son an hour and half later. She finds them playing Chinese checkers on the floor. She thanks them four times for helping her, and goes back to her apartment with her children, nervous eyes flitting about.

“You’re friends with Berwald, right?” Tino asks, downing a shot of vodka from a bottle he produced from his bag.

“Yes,” Lukas replies carefully. “I thought you were too.”

“I am. It’s just complicated.”

“Is this how my Christmas Eve is going to go, Tino? We’re going to sit on the floor, get drunk, and talk about our love lives?” Lukas asks, pouring himself another cup of tea.

“Unless you want to play Chinese checkers,” he jokes, a warm grin spreading across his face.

“You want to hit me up with some of that?” Lukas asks, sliding a juice glass across the greasy Formica counter, of which Tino pours a nice shot into. He downs it a second, because it’s been a long time since he’s been even slightly inebriated.

“So what’s your problem with Berwald?” Lukas asks, leaning back against the kitchenette countertop.

“He puts me on such a pedestal,” Tino says tiredly. “He thinks that I’m perfect, perpetually happy, and no amount of examples otherwise seem to convince him otherwise. It’s exhausting, because I’m inevitably going to disappoint him.”

“I wish I was half as considerate as you,” Lukas says, taking a sip of tea. The combination of tea and vodka on his tongue feels a bit unusual. “Actually I don’t. It sounds exhausting.”

“Ha,” Tino says. “Usually it’s fulfilling,” he says, starting to slur a little bit. “People smiling at me all the time, wanting to talk to me. But Ber seems to think that I’m incapable of being nasty and-“

“Everyone is capable of being nasty,” Lukas says, a bit bitterly, because in his experience it is very true.

“I prefer to think that everyone is capable of goodness,” Tino replies.

“Looks like we’ll have to agree to disagree,” he says, a bit drunkenly as he settles on the cramped sofa by Tino’s side.

That is how midnight comes and goes. Tino and Lukas, on the suspiciously stained sofa that Lukas bought from a yard sale. Blue-patterned birds fly between faded pink stripes, all of which has seen better days. Lukas doesn’t know when those better days were or who experienced them, but he finds himself (oddly introspective from the alcohol) wondering about those better times at 1:00 a.m. as Tino tells him everything. Bits and pieces of a soul that Lukas feels he does not deserve, but he accepts them anyway because they’re friends. And that’s what friends do. They expose odd bits of secrets they shouldn’t and take it all in.

 

_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+

 

“Happy Christmas, Lukas!” the phone receiver tells him excitedly too early in the morning. His head hurts, Lukas notes absently.

“Happy Christmas, Mathias,” he says, sitting up from the sofa and moving Tino’s head off of his legs. Temples pounding, Lukas pads over to the kitchenette to pour himself a glass of cold water. He plans on medicating himself with enough ibeprofen to stomach Mathias’ crippling enthusiasm for at least a phone call.

“You don’t sound very excited! It’s Christmas! Brita and I made ris med mandel, you can come over right?” he asks excitedly.

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll be over in about an hour,” he replies tiredly, rubbing his temples. His voice’s pitch is the exact frequency that seems to echo in his brain, reverberating bits of pain all over.

“Are you hungover, Lukas?” Mathias asks, a bit flabbergasted.

“Only a little. I’ll see you in an hour.”


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Promises are made and broken.

"Hi Lukas,” Brita tells him as she opens the door. Her eyes are narrowed at him, but her judgement is undue. He was careful to dress decently (collared red button-down, khaki trousers) for the holiday in case Mathias’ family asks for his presence at the Christmas dinner. He is cradling a large tin of klejner and vaniljekranse, which he made yesterday morning before Tino appeared bearing alcohol and stories of his burdensome sort-of-boyfriend, because Lukas knew better than to expect productivity from himself during those sorts of incidents (however rare).

She lets him in, and Lukas sheds his rain jacket to hang upon the door. He treks through the foyer after removing his rain shoes, vaguely listening to Brita's antagonististic ranting about her new choral teacher. The noonday light shines through the glass panes and illuminates the Køhler family sitting room. Fairy lights dot their mantel and bookshelves, and a decorative advent wreath spattered with red berries and bright green leaves sits atop their dark wood table. The lopsided Christmas tree is lit up and covered rather over-energetically with strings of mini-Danish flags, tinsel, paper hearts, and glittery red baubles. Everything is perfectly characteristic of a Danish Christmas, right down to the dish of warm pebernødder in a silver-coloured bowl. Lukas doesn't understand the appeal of cookies that aren't sweet, but to each his own.

"If you're looking for Mathias, I think Mor has him sweeping and setting up lights on the back porch," Brita tells him with a sigh (she's gotten more perceptive with age).

"I wasn't looking for him," he informs her squarely, taking a seat on the couch that's so entirely covered with blankets that it looks more an amorphous amoeba of wool and linen rather than a piece of furniture.

She scoffs. "You came here to see me, did you? My mum? I'm not stupid, Lukas," Brita says without looking up from the glossy sports magazine she's currently thumbing through.

Without another word, Lukas returns to the front of the house for his jacket and shoes. He walks around back on the stone path, and opens the creaky gate desperately needing a fresh coat of paint. He has always liked Mathias' yard- it's simple, but well kept, with several planters of tomatos, various herbs, and annual flowers that seem to brighten up the place even in the winter. Lukas can see Mathias from his vantage point, standing on a bar stool to string fairy lights up over the roof of the porch.

"Afternoon," Lukas says without announcing himself, and Mathias jumps. Jumping while precariously standing on bar stools is definitely not advisable, and for good reason: he stumbles, kicking the stool over, but manages to hang onto the top rafter of the porch.

"Give me a hand, Luka?" Mathias asks, surprisingly calm, as a string of lights falls and tangles over his hands. Mathias may be an idiot but he doesn't wish broken limbs upon him (usually), so he chuckles and re-positions the stool so he can climb down. "Like sneaking up on people, huh?"

"It's not my fault if you didn't hear me," Lukas points out with a shrug.

"Want to help me with these lights?"

"Not particularly," he replies easily, and he lays down upon the bench just to show how opposed he is to helping him string lights three meters off the ground.

Mathias laughs, clearly expecting nothing different. "So, a few drinks Christmas Eve? You're becoming quite the wild child in your old age, Luka," he teases.

"How could I say no when Tino showed up at my apartment with a bottle?" Lukas deadpans, propping his feet up on the railing. "Besides, he had a lot to discuss and I couldn't properly give him advice unless properly inebriated."

"You don't look half bad, though. Maybe splash some water on your face, but otherwise not too bad at all," he remarks, craning his head around despite his perch on the stool.

"If you fall again because you were checking out the remnants of my hangover, I'm not helping you get back up," Lukas informs him squarely.

"You don't mean the things you say, Luka," Mathias says in a sing song voice, picking up the hammer from the shelf of the ladder. He fumbles around with selecting just one nail and positions it on top of a thick board in the center of the porch roof.

"Maybe you should just call Berwald to do this for you," Luka says as Mathias curses (he's hit his thumb).

Mathias snorts at that, clearly ruffled by being compared to Berwald. "I built a desk with my dad over the summer, I know how to do this sort of thing," he protests, and sure enough the next few strikes are all successes.

"Perhaps not as well," Lukas teases, and Mathias hops down from the stool, having finished stringing the lights.

"There's lots of other things I can do better than him though," he replies.

"Like what?" Lukas asks feigning confusion as he sits up from the bench, smoothing down the hair on the back of his head.

Mathias opens the door into the house, the hallway that connects to the kitchen. He picks up a platter of sweet-looking confections from the counter and holds them out towards Lukas triumphantly. “Have an apple dumpling and you'll agree that my cooking skills are much more awesome than his,” Mathias says with a grin, holding out a sweet pastry on a fork while taking a bite of another one himself. He has a bit of the food on his lip. Maybe it’s the remnants of last night’s festivities but Lukas somehow finds it endearing.

“Thanks,” Lukas says, accepting the fork and sampling the bite-sized dumpling. It's quite good, but Mathias doesn't need any more ego than he already has got. “I brought cookies. Tino’s running back to his house to get some roasted chestnuts. Is Berwald coming?”

“Of course. Brita’s bringing her boyfriend and her best friends, so no one is an uninvited guest. All four of my grandparents are coming, plus three of my cousins and an aunt or two. We’re borrowing extra tables from our neighbours,” he laughs shortly, taking a cookie from the tin Lukas brought.

“Mm. You should be a pastry chef, Luka, this is heaven,” he says, swiping crumbs from his mouth.

“Mats, help your poor mother. She’s swamped with the dishes. Brita, can you hold Adrian? He’s teething, so watch out for bites,” their Aunt Cecilie teases, and Brita sighs in a long-suffering way as she takes the infant from her aunt’s arms.

“Is there anything I can do?” Lukas asks Anna, Mathias’ mother.

“Yeah, want to help Mathias with the dishes?”

“I’ll wash and you dry?” he asks, and Lukas nods, grabbing a thick towel from the drawer. He knows the locations of every kitchen appliance, every ladle, every platter. He used to practically live here, before he moved in with Berwald and before he found a way to rent an apartment from an Eastern European woman with no qualms about accepting under the table rent. He knows all of Mathias and Brita’s relatives by name, and often he feels like he intrudes too much on their family dynamic, which was precisely the reason he moved in with the Oxenstierna family. Everywhere Lukas goes he is an outsider, but at least the Køhler family makes him feel welcome despite that little fact.

Mathias gives him another dish, which he immediately wipes with the cloth and places in the drying rack. “Hey Mor, we have leftover flæskesteg from last night, right?” Danish Christmas Eves are always more elaborate than their Christmas counterparts, and leftovers were frequently utilised along with some freshly baked side dishes.

“In the oven, dear,” Anna replies. “You and Brita remembered to refrigerate the ris med mandel and kirsebærsauce, right?”

“Of course,” Brita snaps from the opposite end of the countertop. “Why isn’t Davor here, yet? He promised he’d be here!” she mutters into her mobile phone.

“Love is a fickle thing, my dear. Teenage boys aren’t known for their reliability,” their grandmother tuts sadly, tugging on her ancient heart locket with a far-off look in her eyes. She pats Brita on the shoulder, ignoring the look of disgust immediately thrust upon her.

“I resent that,” Mathias says from the kitchen sink. “Lukas never has any complaints about my accountability, do you, Luka?” he says facetiously, giving him a playful hip nudge that almost makes him drop one of the dishes.

“None that he listens to, apparently,” Lukas replies back quickly. They finish the last of the dishes and Lukas leans back against the countertop and crosses his arms. The doorbell rings abruptly and a rapt knock follows.

“This better be Davor,” Brita says under her breath as she runs to the door.

It’s Tino, holding out his box of spiced cashews, with Berwald right behind him holding a tin of no doubt cookies that his mum notoriously bakes hundreds of during the holiday season. She even coordinates St. Lucia’s day for the local nursing home. Davor follows a few minutes after much to Brita’s excitement, and everyone sits down at the multiple kitchen tables.

There isn’t enough room in the kitchen, so there’s a “kids” table in the adjacent living room, just far enough away from the full adults that Davor and Brita feel completely comfortable being extremely loud and uncomfortable in their PDA.

Lukas tries slightly to engage the couple in conversation, but it’s too trying to his patience and eventually he, Brita, Mathias, and Brita’s boyfriend sit in relative silence at the card table, save for Davor’s uncomfortable questions.

It starts with at least relatively normal interrogation, like how did you two meet? How long have you been dating? (Both of which Lukas avidly avoids responding to). Then the questions progress and by the end of the evening they have discovered that Brita’s boyfriend is in fact a bisexual Serbian national who’s clearly much more interested in Mathias than he is in Brita. Unsurprisingly, dinner ends with Brita crying in the bathroom, Davor attempting to acquire Mathias’ mobile number, Lukas rolling his eyes, and their parents wondering what the hell happened in the living room.

“You don’t understand!” Brita says softly, and through the locked bathroom door it is difficult to make out her words. Lukas feels sorry for her, and he spends a good hour leaning against the door with Mathias attempting to comprehend her wailing and offer murmurs of support for Mathias’ kind words.

She tells them that she wants to be alone, and so they return to the kitchen where the party has died down. His maternal grandmother lies asleep upon the sofa, and his parents are packing up the left over food in sealable plastic containers and zipping up the infinite number of cookies into bags.

Tino and Berwald are playing chess in the sitting room by the lit hearth.

“Who’s winning?” Mathias asks, plopping down next to them on the carpet.

Lukas sizes up the collection of pieces that have been slaughtered that are assembled beside the board. “Clearly, Berwald, although Tino still has a bit of chance,” he replies.

“Nice to know that I have a bit of a chance,” Tino replies, bemusedly.

“Maybe not anymore, that was a poor move,” Lukas says, after glancing over the board.

Tino is anything but a sore looser, so he accepts each and every assault on his dwindling supply of pawns, even the final attack on his poor, forlorn king.

“Luka and I are heading out for just a bit, but I’ll be back,” Mathias tells his mother as she passes a plate to his father. Anna raises her eyebrows but agrees; she has only barely passed the denial stage and at times still secretly feels that this shouldn’t have happened to her family. Other times though, she feels lucky. She is divorced but still on good terms with her ex-husband, has two beautiful children who excel in a wide variety of subjects and extracurricular, and she also happens to have a bisexual son. So Anna lets them go.

They spend a few moments by the door pulling on their thick woollen coats, scarves, and mismatched mittens. As soon as Lukas steps outside, the contrast between the fire-warmed home interior and the bitter chill of the front porch is a biting change.

“Didn’t realise it was snowing,” Mathias remarks. The flurries swirl around in the wind, and Lukas pulls his scarf farther up his neck, as the cold seems intent on attacking every bit of exposed skin.

“Well you’re frightfully unobservant, it’s to be fully expected,” he replies without any real snap.

“You say those things, but you love me all the same.”

Lukas snorts. “Love’s a strong word, and I don’t much like strong words.”

“Is it really? It think it’s one of the softest words in the whole Norwegian language.”

Mathias closes the small distance between them and shares a few breaths, before removing the last bit of space between their lips. The air is cold but the kiss is warm, and Lukas rests his cold fingertips on the warm underside of Mathias’ jaw. Their lips have always met with force and passion, but right now it is slow and gentle, a measured sharing of breath.

Lukas breaks away from the kiss, shoving his mitten-clad hands into his coat pockets and walking from the porch. He can hear Mathias’ footsteps thumping behind him as they make their way into the street.

The snow has coated the asphalt and concrete and brick, and the streets of Larvik so often cluttered with traffic or trash or bad memories blanketed with soft, powdery snow.

“Where exactly are we heading?” Lukas asks him incredulously as Mathias pulls ahead of him on the sidewalk.

“If I told you it wouldn’t be a surprise,” Mathias replies with an easy laugh.

Lukas cannot help but smile, even he of his cynical and irreligious nature was not immune to the general positive spirit that illuminated from the Christmas season. He must be significantly affected by the presence of this undefined mood change, because he allows Mathias to take his hand, swinging it as if they’re skipping around Austria in the Sound of Music. Lukas appreciates the warmth that ensues.

“Your family was quite kind to extend the invitation to all of those people,” Lukas ventures.

“Yeah, I guess so,” Mathias replies. “But I’m especially glad that you were there,” he says, squeezing his hand with undue force.

Lukas rolls his eyes but doesn’t release his hand.

Mathias takes him to the grass beneath the bridge, where they once had a picnic together with Berwald. It is on the seashore, and it is beautiful how the stars and snowflakes dot the sky with bright white light. Mathias puts his arm around him and together they watch the snow fall.

“Want to go back now?” Mathias asks him a good hour later, but Lukas has already fallen asleep leaned against his shoulder. Side by side, they sit together on the ground watching the dark water ripple and the stars twinkle.

“We should probably head back, we wouldn’t want to be taken in for trespassing. I’m not entirely sure who owns this property,” Mathias tells him, nudging him gently awake.

“Do you take all your boyfriends to illegal places?” Lukas asks sleepily, not removing his head from his chest or opening his eyes.

“Only the really special ones,” he replies without missing a measure.

Groggily, Lukas gets to his feet and yawns. “You shouldn’t have let me fall asleep, now I’ll stay up all night.”

“Sorry,” he says, not sounding the least bit apologetic. “I didn’t realise you’d nodded off.”

They start walking, and Lukas is distracted enough that he barely notices being led into Mathias’ home. “I’m think I’m going to university in Copenhagen, I sent in my application a week ago and I should be hearing back after the holidays. The jurisprudence program is pretty competitive, but I’m optimistic,” he explains quickly.

“You’re always optimistic,” Lukas murmurs.

“Did you apply to any schools in Copenhagen?” he presses.

Lukas forces his facial features to remain impartial. He doesn’t want to tell Mathias, because if he does then it will seem like he is making one of the most important decisions of his life based on a secondary school romance. Which he isn’t. He applied for admission at four schools- a school of medicine in Copenhagen, a pre-medical program in Stockholm, and two others medicinal schools in Oslo. He likes the campuses in Oslo more, because it’s more familiar to him, but if he is honest with himself the curricula and medical facilities are much more advanced in Copenhagen. “I told you earlier, we aren’t going to talk about this. Not now. When we’ve both made our decisions, sure, but not until then.”

“You’re just scared.”

“Say whatever you want, you’re not going to change my mind.”

“Fine, but I think you’re being cowardly,” Mathias tells him. The word “cowardly” feels like a personal slap.

“You think I’m being what?” he asks, raising the tone of his voice.

“Cowardly,” Mathias tells him. “You’re afraid that you care too much, so you’re going to detach and pretend that you don’t care at all.”

Lukas feels anger flame inside the deepest part of his chest. A righteous, possessive fury that demands to be felt. “Are you trying to get a rise out of me?”

“I actually would just like it if you would be honest with me. Just once. After this, you can lie and pretend all you want.”

“Dishonesty? What are you going to accuse me of next? Bribery? Perhaps manslaughter?” Lukas asks him coldly.

“You know that I’m right,” Mathias says dangerously. His emotions always have and always will get the better of him in these types of circumstances. Now they are fighting, and Lukas does not wish it so but he must stand his ground here because if he doesn’t there is no point in standing his ground ever again.

Mathias pinches the bridge of his nose in frustration. More words are exchanged, things are said, and feelings have been damaged.

“Fine, stay here, I’ll find somewhere else to go, Lukas.” Before he can protest, Mathias grabs his coat and mittens from the rack but forgets his scarf. Lukas is left alone in Mathias’ house, with sickening concern on the face of his boyfriend’s mother.

Mathias finds shelter in Berwald’s home, whom has just been on the receiving end of a pseudo-break up with Tino, and Lukas sleeps off the last bits of his hangovers in his apartment after inviting Tino over, who has plenty to say about his significant other’s recent failures. It seems as if failure and breakups are on the menu this Christmas in Larvik. Christmas is supposed to be about new beginnings, but it seems that this one is primarily concerned with endings.


	13. Chapter 13

Fru Landlady is displeased by Tino’s extended stay (i.e. the second night) at Lukas’ basement flat. So displeased, in fact, that she refuses to let him in.

“Lukonechka,” she tells him squarely. “You know the rules, you can’t keep bringing your friend over.” Then, presumably in Russian, she hisses dangerously, “Bezopasnost' prezhde vsego.”

Lukas has no idea what that means, but apparently Tino does. He mumbles something in clumsy Russian, and Fru Landlady’s expression changes from impenetrable fortitude to something softer, maybe sympathy. The fortitude and harshness is still there, but it appears words from her native tongue have produced a bit of warmth .

“Fine, but this is it!” she yells after them as they bolt down the staircase, in hopes that she won’t change her mind. “Not any more visitors, Lukonechka! I don’t make exceptions to my rules!”

“All right, Fru! No more after this,” Lukas agrees hastily, amazed that Tino managed to convince her with only a few words of what sounded like very poorly practiced Russian.

Lukas heavy-handedly unlocks the deadbolt and hip-checks the heavy metal door open. “Didn’t know you knew Russian,” he remarks, breathing a sigh of relief to be back in his own flat. He kicks the door shut and appreciates the quiet. Even his thoughts, racing upon each other, seem tempered.

Everything seemed to happen so fast this Christmas- one second he was falling asleep on Mathias’ shoulder at the seashore, an intense display of vulnerability, especially for him, and another he was coming to the conclusion that he would never be able to give Mathias what he wanted. He didn’t know if he’d ever be able to be honest with himself, let alone people like Mathias, who seemed so interested in outward displays of affection and love and romance.

It wasn’t as if he didn’t want those things, secretly, sometimes. But he wasn’t prepared to give them to anyone yet. Lukas was young but he was already a man of knowing limits, and he was not about to supersede his own.

“So, spill,” Tino says pleasantly, sitting primly on the sofa.

“You first,” Lukas answers. “I’m going to need to be a little tipsy for this,” he says, opening up his pantry cabinet. He grabs the first thing that looks vaguely alcoholic- which turns out to be apple juice, and bends over to rifle through the narrow, barely populated shelves.

“Ber and I broke up, but it’s not like I didn’t know it was coming,” he says through a sighing exhale.

“What makes you say that?” Lukas mumbles, tossing back a half-glass of whatever Tino left her last night and shivering at the sensation that seems to travel all through his body. The overall affect though is one of dulling numbness, which is exactly what he needs right now. He cannot think too hard about the idea that Mathias cares deeply for him, so much so that he seems to want to follow him to whichever city, whichever country Lukas so desires.

“He wanted too much from me,” Tino says slowly, carefully considering his words. “Mathias is like that with you, isn’t he?”

Lukas shrugs. Mathias wants things that Lukas wishes he was courageous enough to give him; maybe eventually he will be able to. “Yeah, basically.”

“It’s a bit odd, actually. Because I really did like him, but I wasn’t about to settle down and marry him or something like that,” Tino laughs with a dismissive wave of his hand, as if the mere idea was ludicrous. “I want to go to university, I want to have a career, and I certainly don’t want to be attached to another person for the decade that counts the most,” he says, then pauses. “Pass me the bottle, please.” Lukas does, and Tino takes a swig and drops his head to the back of Lukas’ yard sale sofa. He sighs. “Thanks,” he says graciously. “I needed that. I knew I was going to break up with him, but I thought it would be easier, you know? I did like him, and we had fun together, even if he was rather clingy.”

“Well that’s better than not being sure what happened. I don’t even think we fully broke up, but now it’s only a matter of time,” Lukas says.

“How bad was the fight?” he asks.

“Nothing I hadn’t been telling myself for a decade,” he grumbles.

“Sounds like you’re not breaking up then, it actually sounds like you’re just more in love than you thought you were,” Tino teases, then cackles when Lukas shoots him a dirty, stone-cold look. Only Tino could tell him something like not and not get smacked, mostly because Lukas knows that Tino wouldn’t change his word even for the worst sucker-punch. “Don’t be a poor sport, Lukas, you’ve got me drunk and now you have to deal with the consequences,” he adds, hiding delighted giggles behind his hand.

“ _I_ got _you_ drunk? I believe you supplied the alcohol, if my memory serves me right,” Lukas says, plopping down too close to Tino on the floral patterned sofa.

“I’m a little concerned about the reliability of your memory, Luka,” Tino says, and Lukas should know from there that this evening is about to go even more downhill that it did earlier (which he hadn’t considered a possibility). Because only Mats calls him that. Luka, Luka, Luka, Mathias says the name like a prayer, like a whisper of something dear. Tino’s never called him that before, and the fact that he is now when they are sitting close together in an apartment alone, both pretty intoxicated, is a tipping point. Tino laughs at something, and then Lukas laughs because he’s drunk, and then they both lean forward and do something that the both of them will regret for the rest of their respective lives. Lukas sucks on Tino’s lip and breathes inside his mouth, Tino tilts his head back and giggles as he rubs his hands all over Lukas’ back.

But alcohol and post-breakup lows make everything seem like a good idea, and before either of them know it they’re laying on top of each other with their mouths fixed upon each other.

Lukas jumps up with the sudden realisation of what he is doing. “Shit, sorry, I don’t know what I’m doing,” he says, and he takes a step back from the sofa.

“Really? Because I think it could work. It’s not out of the question, you know. We’re both mostly single now," Tino says nonchalantly.

“What? Us?” Lukas asks incredulously. He’s not about to go down a path he’ll regret come morning just because he had a bit of a fight with his boyfriend and his inhibitions are especially low.

“We’re both harassed by our excessively clingy boyfriends who want declarations of love and romantic candle-light dinners, neither of us need all that extra stuff,” Tino says, getting up from the sofa.

He’s charming and uses the right words even while intoxicated, almost dangerously so.

Like a grinning viper, so appealing with smiles and pleasant chatter, but when it comes down to it Tino Väinämöinen is the hardest, most ambitious, and most enterprising person that Lukas has ever had the pleasure of meeting. The most confusing part is that Lukas feels that the niceties and optimism aren’t just a façade or a veneer- Tino actually is all of those complex paradoxes all at once. Nice, seductive, friendly, cold, warm, dangerous, safe, charming. It's impossible to know what to expect from him- because he spends most of his free time volunteering at soup kitchens, tutoring students in Norwegian as a second language, and even working a part-time job. He wants to help people; he wants to save people. But Tino is also a child of a bitter, acrimonious divorce with selfish tugs of war, and he doesn't trust as easily as one might be inclined to believe.

“I admire you, Lukas,” Tino says in a leading way.

Lukas is trying so hard not to step back, because he feels not as if his life is in danger, but his ideals and feelings might be. Tino is a born talker- and he knows this, and he can't help but feel like he might want to surrender into the desire that feels right now. “I admire you in present tense. I just don’t want to have sex with you.” Except he kind of does. Shit.

“Fine,” Tino says, sounding sincere. He takes another sip of his drink, and there’s a long pause between them. “I’m sorry, Lukas. I shouldn’t have assumed.” He sounds like he feels terribly guilty, which isn’t necessary- because Lukas kissed him back, and they both initiated it almost simultaneously.

“I assumed too.”

“I assumed a lot more,” he replies, smiling weakly. “I’m so sorry, I’ll leave right now,” he says in a rush, walking towards the door.

Stopping Tino from going is the first act in a series of acts that Lukas will attempt in an effort to be more courageous, to do the things that his crippling fear of vulnerability tries to prevent him from doing.

“You can stay,” Lukas says. “If you want.”

Tino cocks a thick blond eyebrow. “You sure about that?”

“Yeah. Besides, you’re too drunk to walk home. You might get kidnapped,” Lukas deadpans, teasing.

“I wouldn’t get kidnapped,” Tino says confidently.

“That’s exactly what the cute blond kid says right before the horror movie starts. And I don’t really have the energy to deal with getting duct taped and cut up and shoved in the boot of someone’s car, so let’s keep the jinxes to a minimum.”

“You’re too superstitious.”

“Am not,” he replies as he searches for the leftover cookies he made earlier. He finds them, in a Tupperware container above his cabinet, and grabs a handful. “Want some?”

“Of course, toss the tin over!” Tino says happily.

Lukas does, and they end up playing checkers on the carpet and playing truth or dare, which mostly involves embarrassing confessions that Lukas will pray he didn’t actually admit in the morning.

“I can’t believe your first kiss was under that canoe!” Tino cackles, popping another cookie into his mouth. “That’s so cheesy!”

“Oh, and flirting with Berwald each day out on the rocks of small ocean town wasn’t a teensy little bit cliché?” Lukas replies, laughing a bit dryly.

“Everything about me and Berwald was more than a little cliché,” Tino says, folding his legs under himself. “I’m sure,” Lukas agrees firmly. Honestly he can’t imagine Ber as anything but a silly, sopping romantic. He did have a crush on him once, but he won’t ever tell anyone that ever-ever-ever (even in truth or dare and under the influence of lots of hard alcohol.) There are limits to how much he can share about himself, even with his close friends.

“You want to be a doctor, right?” Tino asks.

“Yeah, probably. You want to be some high-strung government official, right?”

Tino smiles. “Good to see you haven’t lost a sense of humour.” He giggles. “I actually want to enact legislation to protect the environment, but whatever words suit your fancy. Or maybe a paediatrician.”

“How can you talk like that at,” Lukas pauses to check his watch. “3 a.m. when we’ve drunk almost all of whatever you brought here, and the stuff in my refrigerator.”

“We’re so trashy,” Tino chortles tiredly.

Lukas falls asleep with Tino Esa Aabraham Väinämöinen on terrible patterned futon that he bought from a yard sale for only a few krona, and he’s never appreciated Tino more than the moment when he wakes up at noon and Tino has pain medication, a glass of cold water, a bowl of warm porridge topped with fruit and butter, and a cheerful smile that is far too friendly for anyone who drank as much as he did.

“Did you go to the grocery store?” Lukas asks blearily, because he certainly did not have fresh raspberries in his kitchen.

“Yeah, it was only a few blocks down the street. I had to shimmy through the basement window though, which was pretty difficult when I came back with groceries.”

Lukas downs the pain medication and glugs some of the water. The cold is a shock to his system, and reminds him that he probably should brush his teeth in the near future. His head hurts a lot more than it usually does after drinking, probably because he’s going on the second night of this.

“Thanks,” Lukas mumbles into his porridge.

“No problem,” Tino replies, stirring something on the stove, which Lukas can safely say he has never seen turned on (he hadn’t even been aware if it worked or not). “So Matti called my mobile phone, wanted to know if you were dead somewhere in a ditch.”

“What did you say?” he mutters.

“I believe I said ‘Ye of little faith, Luka is in good hands’ but I was just waking up when I spoke to him, so it could have been a bit different,” Tino informs him.

“Ah,” Lukas replies vaguely, far more concerned with getting rid of his smashingly terrible headache and perpetual dizziness than investment in what Mathias had or had not said.

“Thank god the day’s almost over,” Tino sighs, leaning against the cabinet with a tired exhale. “I would hate to be obligated to spend twelve hours doing stuff. I’ll probably stop the library, I think I have some books on hold for that English project due after Christmas vacation.”

“Oh, yeah, I forgot about that,” Lukas murmurs.

“Better get started then,” Tino says, leaving the last part of the statement unvoiced: _Because you’re terrible at English_.

“Yeah, I’ll probably get Mathias to help me.”

“You should probably try to make amends then, he didn’t sound super happy on the telephone,” Tino says ruefully, rubbing the back of his neck.

Lukas gets up reluctantly and goes to find his winter coat.

“You’re going to see him now?”

“Might as well get it over with,” Lukas decides, and darts into the bathroom to change into slightly more presentable clothing than wrinkly stuff from the party the night before.

“Good luck,” Tino says.

“Thanks, I’ll need it,” Lukas says, pulling on woollen gloves and a hat over his ears. He’s planning on biking over to Mathias’ house, which is sort of on the other side of town- and considering that the narrow basement window is thickly coated with snow, it’s a safe bet that it’s still snowing.

 

_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+

 

Not only is it still snowing, it seems to have progressed and transitioned quite quickly into blizzard-like conditions. Lukas wishes he brought a scarf or proper snow boots as his bicycle quickly becomes useless.

He pops into a coffee shop and purchases a black coffee, mostly because he’d like to be able to feel his fingertips. Wrapping his glove-clad hands around the mug, he sighs and leans back against the seat.

“Bad weather, huh?” a girl at a nearby table asks.

It’s difficult to recognise her in all of her winter clothes, but after a second look he realises that it’s Mathias’ sister Brita. He narrows his eyes. He’s still a good 2 kilometres from Mathias’ neighbourhood, so there isn’t any reason that Brita should be here.

“Why are you here?” he asks her.

“Your friendliness never stops astounding me,” she says, sliding into the seat next to him.

He raises an eyebrow at her, which probably doesn’t mean much considering his eyebrows are most definitely covered up by his hat. “Don’t flatter yourself, I’m not stalking you. Our snow shovel broke so Mor sent me to buy a new one, but the store next door was closed. Also, we were running low on hot cocoa,” she says, holding up a grocery store bag no doubt filled with hot chocolate mix.

“Did you walk here?” he asks Brita suspiciously. Anna is a relatively responsible parent, and he can’t imagine that she sent her 14-or-something years old daughter to a store by herself in such a snowstorm.

“Nah, got a ride from our neighbour. I have to walk back though, if you’d like company while you return to our home and confess your undying love for my older brother,” she says with a laugh.

“That’s not what I’m planning on doing,” he snaps quickly.

“Oh, sorry, I forgot how sensitive you were about this whole thing. He’s not even at home as far as I know, he’s moping at Ber’s house.”

“I wasn’t going to see him,” Lukas informs her, a lie.

She chortles and pats him on the shoulder. “See you later, Lukas,” Brita says, finishing her latte and tossing the cup into the recycling bin.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally updated! Enjoy folks! Also disclaimer I have a limited idea how university in the west works, so if there are any glaring inaccuracies I will fix them, just lmk! :)

Lukas sighs unhappily at the prospect of trekking all the way to Berwald's house in this snow. Perhaps he'll take the bus- actually scratch that, the fare just got raised and he's got a paltry two krone, which has to last him until the end of the week.

Larvik, and indeed all of Norway, wasn't created for poor people, he reminds himself.

He resigns himself to walking with his bicycle- the sidewalks have been mostly cleared, although streaks of clear ice stratify the concrete. There aren't very many people milling about, which is a plus. He tosses the bag over his shoulder and takes off. Ber's house is perhaps ten kilometres east, into the sleepy part of Larvik where you can't see the water from the tip top flats.

It is while he is making his way through the banked snow that the wind intensifies. Lukas' cheeks swell and colours pink, but he pushes forward. Eventually, he decides to hazard the immense risk of cycling in this awful weather, because his progress is far too slow. It'll be nearing sundown by the time he reaches Ber's home if he continues at this rate.

He can't feel his toes, or his fingers.

Lukas' face is so numb that when he crashes in a deserted alleyway, he doesn't realise his face is even bruised up until he feels blood coagulate on his chin.

"Shit!" he exclaims. If he had a mobile phone, he would call Mathias. He might even apologise and plead for forgiveness in his current state. His thoughts and actions feel discombobulated and all turned around. But he hasn't got a mobile phone- he's barely got enough for porridge and the occasional coffee.

He picks himself off and leans  dejectedly against the brick wall of the alley, deciding blearily that this was not an excellent idea. Lukas allows himself a moment's rest, but knows he must continue. The sleepy district is not called sleepy for nothing; he has only seen one or two cars in the last ten minutes.

He proceeds at a slower pace, because his left arm could be broken, and eventually rolls up to Ber's front porch, the street lights just turning on and a woolly dark setting upon the town.

Climbing the step feels like quite a task, but he manages up and knocks.

"Yeah?" Berwald's answer is almost immediate. The speed of the door opening startles him, and he stumbles against the side of the house. "You all right?"

"Yeah," he murmurs.

"Don't look all right," Berwald mumbles, and motions for him to come in, hefting his bicycle over his shoulders and propping it against the foyer wall.

"Mathias, help him upstairs? I'll make tea," he says.

"What-what happened?"

"I was dumb. Tried to bike in this weather. Bad idea, I wouldn't recommend it," he jibes, words stuttering and certainly not with the level of snark that he intended. His voice just sounds exhausted and slurred from cold.

"I'm going to Copenhagen," he tells Mathias suddenly. "For nursing school, if I get in."

Mathias stands for a moment in shock, but collects himself. "Come on, let's get you some dry clothes." He helps him up the stairs and brings him into the laundry room, where he strips alone in the cold room while Mathias finds him some clothes. Berwald's size isn't at all similar to his own- but the oversized tee shirt, giant fleece sweater, and soft pyjama pants patterned with dancing reindeer are much more comfortable than his snow soaked and slightly bloody jeans and holey coat.

"Did you mean to come here?" Mathias asks him, trying to keep his tone light.

"Yes," he answers firmly. "I came to see you." The cold is somehow making him more forward than usual, but maybe that's what he needs now.

For once, Mathias is the one that seems uncomfortable, and switches the subject to something less weighty. "I brought a washcloth. You have blood all over your face," he informs him.

Lukas glances sleepily in the mirror above the utility sink. He does indeed. There are even bits of gravel embedded in the deep marks across his cheek. It looks worse than it feels. "Berwald's way better at first aid than me, but we should try to wash it out a bit."

Mathias runs the water warm and steps closer with the damp washcloth. Their chests breathe together, alternating heart beats. He reaches out, barely touching the rag to his face, and Lukas winces.

"I can't do this, it's hurting you too much," Mathias says nervously, retreating.

"Do it," Lukas challenges.  _I hurt you_ , he thinks but cannot say.

It seems to take Mathias a moment to collect his grit and finish the job, which Lukas finds a little pathetic but in an endearing, kind way.  _He cares about me,_ Lukas knows. And he knows that he cares right back, but he doesn't want their levels of care to be so different that Mat feels cheated and Lukas feels smothered. Part of him just says: to hell with it, so what if it doesn't work out?

That part of Lukas has an unusual amount of say in what he does and says as a result of his hypothermia, frostbite, and blood loss. So he leans forward and kisses Mathias lightly on the mouth. It is not a passionate kiss, nor does Mathias attempt to make it into one. Simply a statement that Lukas cannot make, an affirmation he cannot utter, and declaration he might never say.

_I care for you. I want us to stay like this, at least for a while._

"Tea's probably ready," Mathias says, looking decidedly awkward for perhaps the first time ever in his life.

"Yeah," Lukas agrees distantly.

It is, and Berwald is all bundled up in at least three heinous sweaters, cradling a huge pile of logs that probably weigh at least as much as Lukas sopping wet. He drops them on the hearth, clunking and rolling to their positions on the heather grey stones.

Berwald nods to the teacups perched on the end table, and they each take one. It is far too hot to start pouring it down his throat, but he starts feeling his fingers as he cuddles the mug in his hands.

The three of them sit in silence. Old friends with the new knowledge that they are heading into the "real world" far too soon. There will be no more rocks and seaside lounging with sandwiches and roughousing. There will be jobs, rent, and tax reports. Landlords, metro delays, and perhaps bicycle thieves.

Lukas does not want them to change but knows that they inevitably must. A branch that refuses to bend with the wind will snap, he reminds himself absently.

Mathias squeezes his shoulder, but feels far away. Berwald's lost in his own thoughts and an impressive amount of jumpers. Lukas just feels alone.

 

+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+

 

Lukas receives his acceptance letters to the universities he's applied to. He lays each packet out on the creaky hardwood floor in a neat array. He was denied at one school, which he expected, being it the most prestigious sciences and maths university in Europe, but otherwise he has a gamut of choices.

Fru Landlady raps at the door, bringing him a hot coffee and a judgmental tongue.

"What do you think i should do?" he asks her. "I can go to Stockholm to study chemistry or medicine, Copenhagen for nursing or any science, or Oslo for medicine."

Her face stiffens, wrinkles becoming more defined, as she considers what he has just explained. She does not ask him about his family or his desires or dreams or favourite city.

"Which program is cheapest, Lukonechka?" she asks shrewdly.

He glances over the paperwork carefully, searching for hidden fees and doing a bit of arithmetic in his head. "The nursing program, but not by much."

"Cheaper is always better," she says. "You will never be wanting of work as a nurse. It is steady, but you can still be excited. Gunshots, murder."

"Medicine is too long!" she adds when he looks uncertain. "Too much time! What will your degree mean when you have starved to death on the streets of Oslo? Norway is not made for the poor, my dear," she reminds him.

"I could be a scientist," he reminds her.

"You have too much heart," she tells him, as if that is an obvious problem. He resists the urge to be offended. Fru Landlady was brought up in a different time, he reminds himself. But she does raise a fair point with the time aspect- he has no support system, and a three and a bit year nursing certificate would catapult him into the workforce and prevent him from sinking too deeply into poverty. He can't imagine that Copenhagen, the city of beautiful spires, has a fearsome underbelly- but if it does he will almost certainly find himself in it.

"Don't make a foolish decision, Lukonechka. I would hate to read of your death in the newspaper."

He didn't expect it, but he is going to miss Fru Landlady, whose name he still does not know. A fearsome woman with enough grit to overthrow a country, it's a shame she's using it just to hide her illegitimate renters from the police and loan sharks. She is a defender of the underbelly, protects those who have fallen until (if) they get back up. Lukas is determined to be one of her success stories.

He refuses to end up mangled in a dumpster.

Forced onto the drug scene.

Infected with a heinous STI ending in a horribly painful death.

There are infinite situations he could find himself in, but he shakes himself out of the tunnel vision. "You're right. I'll be a great nurse."

She shakes her head. "No. You'll be an excellent nurse. Copenhagen would welcome you with open arms if they knew what was good for them."

"You ever been?" she asks, and her eyes darken.

"That does not concern you," Fru Landlady replies pointedly, and she takes her leave from his basement flat, leaving the steaming coffee on his makeshift table. "Good luck," she adds, an afterthought but it means everything to him.

Is he suited to be a nurse? Won’t he have to comfort patients, assuage the fears of people who are almost certainly about to die, and lie about chances of survival? But then again- less paperwork, faster, cheaper, still worthwhile. He can always go back for a more advanced nursing degree if he wanted to go into research, he decides, and hesitantly picks up the envelope offering him admission.

He wants chaos, ever increasing entropy while he defies the Second Law of Thermodynamics by staying completely calm. He wants blood, hushed prayers in nearly empty hospital rooms, chaotic CPR, and horrific accidents. He can envision himself in the epicentre, yet the eye of the storm.

Alone and surrounded by university admissions materials, Lukas knows exactly what call he needs to make. He wraps himself thoroughly in jackets and scarves and woolen misshapen mittens before daring to venture outside his flat.

He uses the phone across the street to phone Tino, who is equally ambitious in the math and science fields.

“I’m going to Stockholm,” Tino informs him. “I guess I better start liking ABBA,” he remarks, and they laugh mournfully.

“Copenhagen,” Lukas replies. They are going to be far apart- or far enough that they won’t be seeing each other every day. That fact bites deeply into his heart- he has grown to admire Tino more and more over the past few months, come to realise that they are more similar than he would have initially thought.

Tino is just more charming, but strip away the veneers and they are both people with cynical lives trying to see the bright side even though it rarely seems to appear for them.

Berwald and Mathias have families that love each other, solid finances, and a sense of calm, easy peace.

Peace has never come easy for either of them.

“I-“ he trails off, not how to put what he wants to express into words.

“I know,” Tino replies, voice sounding a far away echo from an inner cave.

He presses the phone receiver tighter to his ear. He’s paying a krone for this call, he cannot allow it to be filled with silence. “I’ll write. You’ll write.”

“I’ve never kept my word on that promise to any of my boarding school friends, but I will for you,” Tino replies, words leaving no room for mistrust.

“Know anything of Mathias and Berwald?” Lukas inquires evenly.

“Ber hasn’t decided yet. Haven’t heard anything from Mats. You should call him. I know you’re not together anymore, but you have to at least find out if you’ll be in the same city,” he chides.

“Hold on, my call’s going to run out. See you tomorrow,” Lukas tells him, and puts the phone back on its cord.

He’ll call Mathias later. Right now he needs to think. He shuffles back to his apartment building in the bitter, frigid cold.

Tino thinks that Mathias and Lukas aren’t together anymore. Maybe they’re not. At this point it’s ambiguous at best.

Just as his apartment building comes into view, he sees Mathias standing with his bicycle against the ivy-permeated retaining wall.

“Hey,” Mathias says nervously, sticking his fingers deep inside his pockets and not making steady eye contact like he always does. “You get your letters?”

“Yes,” Lukas answers. “Where are you going?” he asks, trying and failing to appear disinterested.

“You first.”

“ _You_ first!”

“1, 2, 3, we’ll say it together,” Mathias says anxiously.

Lukas rolls his eyes. He knows the answer already. The jurisprudence program in Copenhagen. He knows that is where Mathias will go, but Lukas cannot shake the fear that he is making this decision for the wrong reasons.

“1, 2, 3…”

His reasons are practical, he tells himself. Nursing is not the path he envisioned for himself, but visions are worth jack shit in real life. The world has been browbeating him to this conclusion over the course of his entire existence.

“Copenhagen,” they say simultaneously, although their tones are vastly different. Mathias begins hopeful and ends ecstatic, as he throws his arms around him before they’ve even finished the second syllable.

Lukas begins and ends tentatively, still unsure. He hates the idea of being influenced by a lover in such an important decision. But Fru Landlady told him this was the best choice impartially, which qualms his worst anxieties.

“We’re going to the same city! I got into jurisprudence, I mean I knew I would…” he jokes, as if Lukas doesn’t know how much he stressed over the university’s decision.

“My parents own an apartment there, and our last renters left six weeks ago. They’ll rent it to me for a discount, if you’re not opposed to having a roommate.”

Lukas blinks. Living together? They’re not ready for that, he knows immediately. They need to weather more storms together before they can be certain of each other. Mathias is too optimistic, believes the best in himself, Lukas, and them together. “I’ll think about it,” he manages.

Saving money would be a plus. He is in dire lack of it, despite the crazy amounts of hours he worked in the bakery. Living on one’s own is more expensive than one might imagine, especially in Norway.

Norway was not made for poor people, he knows.

Maybe Copenhagen will be different. Maybe he will be different.


End file.
